“Hi guys. Miss me?”

Buffy – ‘When She Was Bad’

****

Anya and Xander made their way towards the house wearily. They had been walking for hours and it was getting dark. They were tired and growing cold, so they pressed ahead, hoping that the owners would provide them with shelter for the night. “What if they're demons?” Anya asked Xander in hushed tones her eyes fixed ahead on the small stone cottage.

“Right now? I don't really care. All I want is somewhere to sleep that isn't cold and isn't outside. So I'm going to ask. If they kill us... Well then we don't have to worry about sleeping out here with the rabbits.” Anya shuddered and quickened her pace.

They stopped at the door and glanced at each other before the former demon pushed her fiancée forward. “Knock.”

“Me?” Xander exclaimed moving back to face Anya. “Why can't you knock?”

“You're the man. You're supposed to do it.”

“Since when have I been in charge?” Xander asked exasperated.

“Since we got here,” Anya told him and once again pushed him towards the door. “Knock.”

Xander took a deep breath and knocked quietly on the door. “Knock louder,” Anya ordered and Xander knocked again.

“Ok, ok,” a voice greeted them as the door swung open. “God relax will y.. Xander?”

“Cordy?”

“Cordelia,” Anya said with a smile, remembering she had been close to the girl once upon a time. Her smile faded when she remembered why they had been close. “You can't have Xander back.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Like I'd want him. Come in.”

Xander and Anya stepped into the cottage their gazes sweeping over the small room, coming finally to rest on Giles who sat at the table, still dressed in his pyjamas.

“Giles?”

“Xander! Anya! Thank God you're alright. What happened?”

The couple gratefully sat at the table and Cordy went to sit by Giles as they filled their friends in on what had happened.

****

Spike and Angel hit the ground heavily. They lay still for a moment checking for broken bones and injuries of any kind. When it was clear that neither of them had been hurt the blonde vampire turned to his Grandsire. “This is all your fault!”

“My fault? How can it be my fault? Darla and Dru are the ones who sent us here, and don't try and tell me I upset Drusilla because...”

“We both know she thinks the sun shines out of you. Well peaches I hate to be the one to break it to you but everything bad that happens I can trace back to being your fault. I've had years of experience at it. Lets see. How about, if you hadn't lost your soul and taken Dru away, we would still be together now? Maybe in Brazil. Not perfectly happy but getting along, just as we were before. I wouldn't have this bloody chip in my head, and we wouldn't be stuck here. Or maybe you'd prefer the one where, if you hadn't been such a drunken, whorin’ layabout, while you were alive Darla wouldn't have turned you, you wouldn't have turned Dru and she wouldn't have turned me. I'd have died of old age about eighty years ago.”

“And that's what you want is it William? To be dead and gone? ‘Cause just say the word and I will happily make that wish come true.”

“You still don't get it do you?” Spike said angrily. “You think because every woman you've ever met worships the ground you walk on, that I automatically will too.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Really?” Spike drawled. “Darla, Drusilla, Cordelia...”

“Spike...!”

“Buffy!”

“That's enough”

“Well I don't worship you. Maybe I did once upon a time, but that ended long ago.”

“When I got my soul back, I know...” Angel told him, growing angry himself and not wanting to talk with Spike about how much they hated each other now.

“No.”

“What?”

“It wasn't when you got you soul back,” the blonde vampire confessed quietly. “It was when you lost it again.”

“I don't understand.”

“Well I'll talk slowly and then maybe you'll manage to get the gist. When Dru turned me she was in no fit state to be my Sire in every sense of the word. You taught me everything; you helped me with everything. You made me what I was and I worshipped you for that. But when Angelus came back, a hundred years later, I wasn't the same. Inside me there were things that went against everything I was but as much as I hated them, all I could do was blame you for making me that monster in the first place.”

“Spike, I...”

“You took Dru, Angel. You didn't want her, didn't care about her the way you did Darla or love her the way I did. But you had the power. And you wanted to show me that she was still yours. Sometimes, in those hundred years you weren't around, she'd call for you and I never knew what to do. She'd scream your name and not mine and every time it happened I hated you. But I had her. And that was all that mattered. She needed me. But she never chose me. She never could and she never will. If there was a choice between you and me she'd pick you. And now I'm right back at the start again. But this time it's hell of a lot worse. I can't win can I? Because you're always there. Good or evil, you've always done something better. Better vampire to the vampires and a better man to the humans. And none of them get it. The only thing that changes you Angel is your soul. Without it, you're a monster, just like the rest of us. I don't have a soul. Which of us is the better vampire? Or the better man?

“And your chip is all that changes you,” Angel countered. “If it stops working or comes out, then...”

“Then what?! I'm going to kill all these people I've spent the last year protecting? If I'd wanted them dead that much I wouldn't have bothered. All those months she was gone that I spent waking up just before sunrise and having to remind myself that I couldn't just walk outside and greet it. You think you had it bad Angel? At least you had her for a while. You got to hold her and look after her and you never once had to look into her eyes and see her disgust and hatred of you. You gave that up, so if you were in pain I really don't give a damn. I had a week. One week where she treated me as something other than dirt. One week where I felt alive again. Where I felt like I had found my place in the world.”

“What happened to you?” Angel asked after a moment’s silence.

“I don't know,” Spike told him with a slight smirk. “Whatever it was though, I glad for it.”

“You are?”

“Do you remember what you told me about what we are as vampires being based on what we were? Do you remember what I was Angel? A poet. A romantic. A poor fool who wanted nothing more than to love and be loved. I was a good man. So what does that make me now? A good vampire?”

“I don't know what it makes you. I don't think it makes you anything. You make yourself what you are.”

“And have you got any words of wisdom about what that might be?”

“No. But I think I know someone who could.” Angel couldn’t really believe he was encouraging his Grandchilde to be with Buffy, but something about the way the Slayer had looked at Spike, made Angel feel like it was all meant to be.

“You seriously expect me to tell her all of that?” the younger vampire asked incredulously. He’d said a lot of things to Buffy in the past year and a half. They’d shared soul-bearing moments together. Well they would have been soul-bearing if he’d had a soul to bear. But usually the blonde Slayer had laughed loudly in his face. Or punched him. Or pushed him. Or ripped out his heart and stamped her pretty feet on it.

“I expect nothing from you William. I never did. That's how you managed to make me so proud.”

“What?!”

“You make me proud. I mean, a lot of the time a want to tie you up and drive hot pokers through your chest just to show you what it feels like, but if you're half the man Buffy described, then I'm very proud of you.”

Spike looked away and shifted uncomfortably. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” A silence descended between the two vampires, but it was a comfortable silence as they both came to terms with each other’s feelings.

“We better go,” Angel said eventually.

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, finally looking back at his Sire. “Together or apart?”

“If we stick together we won’t be part of the girls’ twisted plan. We have to find the others, then Dawn.”

****

Dawn woke up on a bed. A soft, incredibly comfortable bed. She opened her eyes sleepily, barely taking in her surroundings before her head lolled to the side and she snuggled a little further into the warmth.

A dream. Thank God. She was in bed. Everything was fine.

But no. Everything wasn’t fine. She wasn’t in the bed, she was on it. And she was holding something. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up with a jerk. She was lying on a four-poster bed in the centre of a round room. The sort of room fairy-tale princesses were locked in, before Prince Charming came to save them.

The young girl looked down and saw she was wearing a long midnight blue, velvet dress of medireview style and was holding a small posy of white roses in her hands. Dawn rolled her eyes. “Geez, cliché much? Is there a dragon downstairs too?” She climbed off the bed and went to the door, tugging forcefully at the handle, but with no success. She sighed angrily and stamped her foot, before realising that no one could hear her and probably wouldn’t do anything even if they could. As Buffy had once told her, there was absolutely no point in having a tantrum when there was no one around to hear.

Dawn heard a sound on the other side of the door and ran quickly back to the bed, rearranging herself on it as she had been when she awoke. It amazed her she wasn’t more scared, but as she lay there, feigning sleep, she thought that after spending so much time with Glory, Darla and Drusilla seemed like amateurs and whatever the two female vampires had planned for her and her friends, it was nothing they couldn’t handle.

“Wakey, wakey. Rise and shine,” the British voice greeted her and Dawn gave up any pretence of sleep. She pushed herself into a sitting position, resting herself on one arm as she looked across the room at her visitor. Her smile was mocking and she raised one eyebrow in the way Spike had spent all summer teaching her. Buffy had been highly amused the first time she had seen it.

“Hello Dawn.”

“Ethan,” Dawn greeted with a fake smile. “I thought you were in some military stronghold.”

“Yes but I was let out for good behaviour. Aren’t you pleased to see me?” He set the tray he had been carrying down on a small table and sat opposite the teenager on one of the old-fashioned armchairs.

“Let’s see,” Dawn mused, pursing her lips. “The last time you were in Sunnydale you turned Giles into a demon, the time before that you made mom go all weird and act like a teenager and sleep with Giles. Ick. And the first time you came you turned me into a vampire at Halloween. So I’m thinking, no I’m not pleased to see you. You’re behind this?”

“Nope. Once again I am simply fulfilling the brief given to me.”

“By two evil demons. How could you?”

“Well they said, do it or die, and I quite like living so…”

“Buffy is going to be so mad when she finds out you’re the one who did this. She will kick your ass so hard…”

“Yes I imagine she will,” Ethan said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Still, can’t be helped. And if it’s any consolation Dawn, I really do hope they all find a way to win.”

****

“Stay together he says,” Spike muttered as he hurtled through the trees. He could no longer sense the demon behind him, but he didn’t want to take any chances. It had attacked the two vampires as they had stood arguing about which direction to head, and it’s sheer size and strength had had them running in the opposite direction at the first possible opportunity. Somewhere along the way however they had been separated and Spike really hadn’t been inclined to go back and look for his Grandsire.

The blonde vampire emerged from the wood into a clearing. The glistening waterfall and the silvery pool of water would otherwise have given him pause, but his attention was divided between the threat behind him and the relief at what was before him. Buffy. She was sitting with Willow and Tara – Thank God – and a dark haired man with glasses he judged to be Wesley from the others’ description of the former Watcher.

“Buffy.”

The small group looked up at the sound of his voice and Buffy visibly relaxed. Not sparing the others a glance, he moved quickly to the Slayer and pulled her into his arms. She held onto him tightly and they stood for a moment unmoving in each other’s embrace.

Finally Buffy stepped back and the vampire looked down into her face. “What’s wrong?”

The Slayer gave a weak smile and shook her head slightly avoiding Spike’s eyes. He grasped her chin lightly and forced her face up to look at him. “Tell me.”

Sensing that they were involved in something that was none of their business, the two witches and the former Watcher moved away from the vampire and Slayer, giving them some privacy.

“It’s nothing Spike,” Buffy began adamantly, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. If there was one person in the world who knew her better than she knew herself, it was him. She sighed. “I’ve lost my power.”

“What?”

“My Slayer powers. My strength and speed, they’re gone. I can’t run as fast or as far, without getting breathless. I can’t even lift Willow.” Her voice her started to break and her lower lip trembled a little as she pouted. For a moment all of Spike’s attention was fixed on her mouth. It looked so kissable. A memory surfaced. ‘Oh pouty. Look at that lip. Gonna get it…’ Thankfully though his brain finally registered what she had said and his eyes snapped back to hers.

“It has to be part of the game,” he told her, deciding against the, everything’s-going-to-be-ok route again.

“What game?” she asked, as Spike’s statement drew the attention of Wesley, Willow and Tara. The Slayer glanced around her before a half confused; half fearful look crossed her face. “And where’s Dawn?”

Chapter 14

“Love makes you do the wacky.”

Willow – ‘Some Assembly Required’

****

Angel realised too late that Spike had run in a different direction to him. He could feel the creature behind him still and couldn’t afford to change course now. He had emerged from the forest a while ago and was now running across open fields, his vampiric sight searching ceaselessly for some sort of shelter.

****

Cordelia paced the small room endlessly as her three companions sat together, discussing what had happened to them. She felt as though she should be doing something. Xander was about to comment when she passed the window for the fifth time, but something caught her attention and she moved back to peer through the glass. Without a word she threw the door open and ran outside as fast as humanly possible.

“Angel!” she shouted with relief as she flew towards the vampire.

“Cordy,” Angel shouted back, his arms waving at her anxiously. “Get back inside!”

Cordelia stopped in confusion and frowned, seconds before the vampire swept her up in his arms and continued on his path towards the cottage.

“Invite me in,” he said hurriedly, dropping her to her feet just inside the threshold. The words took a few seconds to register before Cordy did as her friend asked.

“Come in.”

“With that the vampire stepped inside, slamming the door shut behind him. “Keller demon,” Angel announced, moving towards the window to check on the creature’s progress. “I think.”

“Angel,” Xander greeted with false cheer. “How’ve you been?”

Angel turned his attention to the other people in the room, nodding briefly at Giles and ignoring Xander. He moved to Cordy. “Are you ok? I was so… when you didn’t come back I thought… And then Gunn said…” he trailed off, unable to find the right words and Cordelia smiled.

“I know.”

The moment passed and Giles cleared his throat. “Angel, do you know what’s going on? Why we’re here?”

“We’re participating in a little game Darla and Drusilla cooked up,” Angel answered, scanning the room for something to fight the Keller demon with. Cordelia gave an annoyed sigh and rolled her eyes. “Angel, I’m only going to say this once more. Kill them. Kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them.”

“Actually you said that six times,” the vampire told her, moving towards the fire and lighting one of the logs that lay stacked at the side.

“I meant I’d only say the sentence once.”

“Um, I hate to bring this up,” Xander interrupted, “but Darla’s dead.”

Anya turned to look at him. “Are you sure?”

Xander smiled at his fiancée. “I was in the room when it happened. Not something I’m likely to forget.”

“Yeah,” Cordelia agreed with a smirk. “She died and now she’s back. Understand?”

Xander opened his mouth to ask how Darla could possibly have been brought back, but Anya, sensing what he was about to say, elbowed him none too gently, in the ribs. “Buffy,” she hissed and her fiancée nodded.

Angel passed a burning log to Giles and one to Xander, while Cordelia made a pair for herself and Anya. When each of them was finally armed, they made their way back outside, where the demon had finally stopped.

“Do you have a plan?” Cordelia asked her friend.

“Don’t die,” Angel offered before charging the demon, the others close behind.

****

Buffy approached Spike hesitantly, sensing his mood. She didn’t blame him for what Darla and Drusilla had done, knowing that they could have done the exact same thing at any other time and they’d all have been powerless, but she also knew Spike blamed himself.

“Hey,” she said as she sat down next to him at the side of the small pool. Wesley, Willow and Tara were theorising about what Spike had told them earlier on the other side, well out of earshot. “You ok?”

The vampire turned his head slightly in her direction but didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry.”

Buffy sighed. “We’ve done this. We went through all of this once when I got back from…” Buffy struggled slightly. It sounded odd to her, saying that she had come back from the dead. She knew she didn’t have to worry about it though. Spike always knew what she meant.

“Well if I didn’t let you down so much,” Spike was arguing, “maybe you wouldn’t have to say it.”

“If you let me down I wouldn’t say it,” Buffy told him. “It wasn’t your fault I died. It really, really wasn’t. And it’s not your fault Dawn is God knows where right now. It’s your evil-ex’s fault. And my ex’s evil-ex.” Spike smiled. “I knew I could get you to smile,” Buffy told him, chuckling softy.

“I’m still sorry.”

“Yeah I know. But I also know that you’d have died trying to save her.” He did meet her eyes then and she smiled softly, taking hold of one of his hands. They sat together like that for several minutes, neither saying a word.

Finally Spike spoke. “I’ll get her back for you.”

“We’ll get her back. For us.”

****

Tara watched the vampire and Slayer surreptitiously as Willow and Wesley made plans. Despite what she had said in the past, Tara was all for Buffy and Spike starting a relationship. She had grown fond of the vampire over the summer after Buffy’s death and since the Slayer’s return she had become convinced that the pair were perfect for each other. This situation wasn’t going to be the best for beginning a romance, but she thought it might help in some ways.

For one thing they were going to have to spend all day every day together, time enough Tara thought, for them to get a fully rounded picture of the other’s personality. And the Buffybot wouldn’t interrupt them, just when Buffy’s thoughts had taken a gooey Spike turn.

Therefore the blonde witch had just appointed herself the couple’s official matchmaker. While appearing to be listening intently to what her girlfriend and the former Watcher were talking about, she was devising ways to make sure Buffy and Spike spent some time alone together.

****

“So we’re looking for a castle or a tower of some sort?” Buffy asked Spike as she leant sleepily against him, her hand still entwined with his.

“I suppose so. That’s where evil tyrants usually stash the pretty princesses.” Spike was trying to act as casually as possible, despite Buffy’s warm body pressed against his side.

She yawned and unconsciously snuggled further into him. “And you’re sure Dawn’ll be alright ‘til we get there?”

“They might be nasty bints love; they might even be crazy, but they are not stupid. They won’t hurt Dawn until…”

“Until we get there?”

“Try to hurt her I meant. I swear Buffy, this time…”

“Don’t,” Buffy said turning her head up so she could look into his eyes. “I trust you. You don’t have to make me any more promises.”

Spike leant down and reverently kissed the top of her head. He waited until her breathing had evened out signalling sleep before his whispered. “I love you.”

Part 5