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‘Awakenings’ is Part Two of a multi-part series, ‘Journeys’ and follows ‘Promise to a Lady’. If you’ve not yet read that, you probably should, or parts of this as well as future parts may well confuse you. Some plot points from early Season 6, even some scenes, and an occasional direct line of dialogue, have been downright stolen by me and incorporated into ‘Awakenings’. I hope I’ve kept this to a minimum, but I’m sure there will be occasional eyebrow raising among readers, especially during Chapter One. A longer note from me following that chapter explains my reasoning in a little more depth, if anyone is remotely interested.
‘Journeys’ has angst, sex, blood play, and the occasional very bad word. Most of all, it has, I hope, love. However, the adult nature of this story does give it an overall rating of NC-17.
Feedback will not necessarily make the chapters appear any faster, but I’ve found it does inspire me to keep plugging away, and it is lovely to receive. In other words, please send. My e-mail address is: MKStatz@aol.com.
I’m going to try to continue to post at a sedate pace until I’ve completely finished the story. Then – watch out – because I promise I’ll be sending out chapters much more quickly.
Joss Whedon, ME, UPN, WB, blah, blah, blah...The television programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and all of the characters appearing in them belong to someone other than me. If they belonged to me, I’d – well, read and find out.
BY starlight and candle-light
and dreamlight
She comes to me.
—Herbert
Trench
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,
Dawnie.”
Dawn shifted nervously under Buffy’s
gaze.
“Now?” she protested. “I’m kinda tired, what with the
whole fighting demons in the sewers and trying to live with the
trauma of being named Umad.”
Buffy took a deep breath. “Yeah,
now.”
“You called me ‘Dawnie’. Lots of times that means it’s
either something really important or something I’m not gonna like.
Is it, um, either of those things?”
“It’s important, yeah.”
Buffy looked into her sister’s wary eyes. “But not bad
important.”
Dawn visibly relaxed.
They sat down on
Dawn’s bed together. After Spike had strolled out, Buffy had taken a
few minutes to calm down, and had been waiting for Dawn in the
younger girl’s bedroom when she got out of the shower. Dawn was
still combing out her wet hair, and Buffy ran her eyes over the
gleaming strands, over her sister’s face, so young, and over her
beautiful blue eyes. So like Spike’s, she thought
inconsequentially.
“It’s about when I was, ah,
gone…”
Dawn’s mouth formed an ‘O’, but no sound came out. The
sisters stared at each other.
“Was it – was it really bad?”
Dawn asked at last. Her tone held reluctance and fear.
“It
was – no, Dawnie, it wasn’t bad.”
“Really?”
“Really,”
Buffy gave a soft smile of remembrance. “I wasn’t in hell. Or in any
kind of a hell dimension.”
“You weren’t?” Buffy wasn’t sure
if she could interpret the look in her sister’s eyes. Hope, maybe?
Something else?
“No. I – I was in heaven, just like you
thought. I don’t know why Willow was so sure I wasn’t, but I wanted
you to know. I was – at least, I think it was heaven. I was
warm, at peace, resting, you know. I felt like I was finished. I
didn’t have to do it all alone any more. The others keep talking
about torture, and suffering, and I just… It’s… I wanted you to
know.”
She overheard them sometimes, from the next room, or
from down the hall. Willow and Xander, mostly, though they were
sometimes joined by Anya or Tara. They talked about the hell thing a
lot. They were concerned about her. She knew that. She could
hear it in their voices. She thought perhaps they wanted her to
acknowledge her pain as a sort of first step toward healing. But she
just hadn’t been able to talk about it with them. She didn’t feel
like she could lie about being in hell, thank them for their help,
and ease their worries. And she couldn’t talk to them about heaven
yet either. Not yet. And she didn’t know why.
She
thought it was because she didn’t want to cause them pain.
They were so sure they’d done something wonderful, and she didn’t
want to take that away from them. She didn’t know if the relief they
would feel at knowing she hadn’t been suffering hellish torments
would make up for knowing what they’d taken her from, and what
they’d taken from her.
Buffy shifted a bit uneasily. She
hoped she wasn’t punishing them in some way by withholding
the information from them. She hoped she wasn’t the kind of
person who would do that. But just the fact that it had occurred to
her made her question her motives.
Every time she thought
about sitting down with them and telling them what had really
happened, every time she envisioned the encounter, everything inside
just coiled into knots, and she was left feeling shaken and ill.
She’d thought that her reluctance to discuss the issue with them
might be because she was having so much trouble remembering her past
with them clearly, that they felt like little more than strangers to
her. But her memories were back now, and, at this point at least,
that hadn’t affected her feelings about telling them at
all.
That could change at any time, Buffy, she told
herself. Just relax, let things come. Giles and Spike kept
telling her that she hadn’t been back long, that she needed
to…
Buffy took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Relax.
Don’t … Just relax. Relax, relax, relax. Think instead about
how great it was to be able to remember things – people – events.
For her friends to, at least, feel more – familiar – to her. Buffy
allowed herself to enjoy the wash of memories. She smiled. They’d
been through so much together, faced and overcome everything the
Hellmouth had thrown at them. Well, almost everything. And they’d
done it by working together. Not always with perfect symmetry
but…
“This is the crack team that foils my every plan? I
am deeply ashamed.”
Buffy’s smile deepened. They
might not have been experts, but they’d managed to foil Spike’s
plans often enough. His, and a lot of the other demony types that
had shown up on the Hellmouth with visions of mayhem dancing in
their heads.
She could remember now, and it was such a relief
to not have to reach for memories of their shared past, but… But
more familiar or not, she still didn’t feel right about them.
Connected.
Relax, relax, relax.
Grrr. If she could
make that growly-roar sound that Spike did so well, she would.
Just give it time, Buffy. Maybe she could record herself, and
Spike and Giles saying that into one of those miniature tape
recorders like Felicity used, shove it under her pillow, and play it
all night. Really absorb it into her brain, like some form of
self-hypnosis. Things are coming back. You will
feel like you used to. You will be able to feel the
friendship and caring inside you again. Just. Give. It.
Time.
Dawn sat back against her headboard, and tipped her
face up toward the ceiling for a moment.
“I’m – I’m glad. I
was scared about it, worried, you know, that hell had sorta freaked
you out,” she admitted. “Changed you.”
“Yeah,” Buffy said
softly. “I know I’ve been acting pretty strange since I got back. I
think I was kinda in shock or something at first. Maybe I still am a
little. And I’ve been really confused about things, having… having
some major memory problems. But, hey! They seem to be clearing up,
too. So I’m thinking, soon… Normal Buffy.”
“Memory problems?”
Dawn asked. “Like not knowing where anything in town
is?”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “It was the tour, wasn’t it? It
gave me away.”
“Pretty much,” Dawn smiled. “Turning around to
check out landmarks like dad taught us when he dragged us out on one
of those lame, and Could the Ground Be Any Rockier Under My
Back? camping trips.”
“Eeeww.” Buffy concurred on the camping
memories.
“The clincher was when you didn’t know who Giles
was.”
“Oh, yeah, that.” Buffy met her eyes. “I know it’s
weird. It’s like a whole new chapter of weirdness in the life of
Buffy Summers. When I first came back it was pretty, er, bad.” She
gave a helpless lift of her shoulders, and made a face. “Okay, it
was worse than bad. I didn’t know where I was, or who all the people
around me were. Except you,” she quickly assured her. “I knew you.
Right away. Well almost right away. On the stairs, just before you
and Spike cleaned up my hands. When you grabbed me in that alley and
dragged me home through,” she frowned, “big building, long halls,
gaudy carpeting?”
“The multiplex.”
“Oh. Well, I’m
still a little confused about that, I have to admit. I didn’t have
any idea what was going on. But once we got back here, it was kinda
like – ‘oh, there’s Dawn and Spike.’” She frowned. “That was all the
same night, right?”
“Yeah,” Dawn replied, frowning
herself.
Buffy felt rather pleased with herself, but catching
the line between Dawn’s brows, she quickly offered more reassurance.
“I remember everyone now, really.”
“You really didn’t know
who Willow and Xander were? God, Buffy. I mean, sometimes you looked
at everyone kinda weird, and I, um, wondered, but…
god.”
“Well, it wasn’t a total eclipse of my brain. It
would kind of come and go.” Buffy made wave motions with her hand.
“Whoosh, memory working, whoosh, memory totally defective. Back and
forth. Up and down. Not you see it, now you –”
“Sorta
roller-coastery?” Dawn interrupted her lengthening list of
descriptions with one of her own.
Buffy considered that.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “Without, you know, the cool weightless
effects.”
“Like when your butt goes airborne – I love that!”
Dawn enthused.
Buffy smiled. “Me, too.” She looked at Dawn
out of the corner of her eyes. “You know, I remembered you right
away, but some little details from our past seem really clear to me
right now. Like when you crossed off ‘Buffy’ and wrote in ‘Dawn’ on
my autographed photo of Dorothy Hamill and took it to school for
show and tell, and when you grabbed my New Kids on the Block video
and pulled the tape out so it was garbage, so we ‘could’ watch
‘Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer’ instead for, like, the ten
millionth time.”
“Hey, it was your video from when you were a
kid!” Dawn tried to pass her geekiness on to her sister’s
shoulders.
“I also remembering when you borrowed my brand new
red halter top – the one with the little rhinestones around the
neck?” she nudged Dawn’s memory, “And wore it for a Halloween
costume – as a hooker. Not to mention you were, like, ten at the
time, and shouldn’t’ve even known what a hooker was.”
“Oh
great. I get to be Umad and my sister remembers all the times
she most wanted to kill me – all in one night!”
“You know
what else I remember? I remember when mom lost her job in L.A. and
to save money I had to give up figure skating. You baked me double
chocolate chip brownies.”
“Only slightly scorched,” Dawn
added proudly.
“And that night just after Angel left
Sunnydale? You bought a giant Hershey bar and flowers and gave them
to me. So I’m not just remembering the bad things.”
“No,
you’re remembering the chocolatey moments too.”
“Yeah.” Buffy
nodded. “‘Cause chocolate and Buffy?”
She looked at Dawn
expectantly.
“Veerrry mixy things,” they drawled out
in unison. They grinned together at shared memories.
A
comfortable silence descended.
“What was it like?” Dawn asked
at last. “I mean heaven. What was it like?”
Buffy smiled.
“Wonderful. Unbelievable.”
“Did you get, like, the answers to
all your questions about, you know, life, and stuff?” Dawn’s eyes
lit up briefly. “Was it forty-two?”
“Hmmm?” Buffy’s mind was
beginning to drift as she let remembered sensations flow through her
body. So wonderful.
“Never mind,” Dawn
said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Buffy murmured. Her eyes took on
a certain dreaminess, a vague distance. “I wasn’t really – thinking
about stuff, I guess. It was just the most amazing peace. I was
resting, floating, maybe.” “It was like being completely surrounded
by warmth and love. Total serenity.”
I can almost touch
it. Almost…
“Buffy? Buffy?” Dawn’s voice reached her,
faint, and faintly wigged. “Buffy!”
“Hmmm?”
“Are you
okay?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Buffy nodded, blinking.
“Fine.”
Buffy lay down next to Dawn. She trailed her fingers
across the younger girl’s hand, smiling softly. Dawn looked at her
hard for a moment before laying down as well. She curled onto her
side, and the sisters lay facing one another. Buffy’s fingers moved
to Dawn’s hair, and for a moment she toyed with the damp strands as
she studied her face again.
“She's more than that. More
than family... my sister, my daughter...” I love her, mom, and I
promise you, I’ll take care of her.
“You’ve been really
helpful.” Her voice was hushed. “And I want you to know how much I
appreciate it. You’ve kind of taken in all the weirdness that has
been me lately, and accepted it, and I wanted to thank you for not
freaking out to my face, even though I’m sure it was pretty hard not
to.”
“Sometimes,” Dawn admitted. “Even right now, you’re, um,
not acting real Buffyish.”
Buffy’s face went into thoughtful
mode as she considered that. She felt Buffyish.
“I
feel like me,” she said with certainty. “Like Buffy.”
“Is
that a lot like ‘feeling like a ‘Joan’’?”
“Very
funny.”
“You picked that lame-o name, not
me!”
“There’s nothing wrong with Joan.” Actually, she thought
the name seemed sorta like a combination of Joyce and Dawn. Maybe. A
little.
Dawn rolled her eyes. “But, yeah, I’ve been worried.
You’ve been all kind of, um, softer or something.”
Buffy’s
eyes lit up. “Oh, I know this part! It’s where the conversation
somehow turns into a listing of my previous and apparently well
known faults.”
Dawn raised her brows. “Do you want me to get
my notebook with the complete listing? Reading it might take the
rest of the night, but…”
“Do you take lessons from Spike, or
is this a natural talent?” Buffy asked.
Dawn smirked before
forcing her face into a contemplative visage. “Both, I think,” she
answered, nodding thoughtfully. Then she laughed.
“Giles and
Spike have kind of said the same thing – that I seem different. But
I feel like me. Mostly. But then I was always with me, wasn’t
I?”
“Huh?”
“Well, I was gone, away from all of you,
and… ” her voice trailed off.
Dawn frowned. “What?” she
urged.
“I was there a long time, Dawnie. In
heaven.”
“Longer than five months, you mean?” Dawn stared
into her sister’s eyes. “But – how? And how long?”
“Time
didn’t pass the same way it does here. And for me, it felt like I
was there for hundreds of years.
“Wow,” Dawn said softly, her
voice full of emotions. Shock. Wonder.
Buffy watched her
trying to absorb this new piece of information.
“So, maybe I
did change. I don’t know. I feel like me, but at the same time, I
know I’m not quite how I was before… It’s like I’m readjusting, you
know? Some things are a little – difficult. Odd things. Like noise.
It bothers me, and I find myself trying to avoid it. Spike and I
were at the Bronze earlier, and I just kept trying to tune it all
out, kept wishing things were just sort of – quiet, you know?
Peaceful?”
“Well, if you were surrounded by peace for
hundreds of years…” Dawn offered.
“Yeah,” Buffy agreed. “And
it’s kind of painful – physically painful – to feel anger. I’ve
thought about that a lot, ‘cause I know that’s not how I used to
feel at all. I got mad one night on patrol, and it made me feel kind
of, you know, gack! Maybe it’s just, having been away for so long,
never feeling any pain or anger…”
Buffy frowned. “Although… I
had a fight with Spike while you were in the shower, and it didn’t
make me feel sick at all. So maybe I’m readjusting to that,
too.”
“You had a fight with Spike?” Dawn asked cautiously,
but Buffy could hear the note of fear in her voice.
She made
a face. “Oh, no, not that kind of fight,” she reassured her. “Just
like, an argument, you know. No big. Really.” It had actually felt
kind of – good. Sparks flying between them, getting kind of riled
up…
“Look at you. All flushed and smart mouthed. Body all
tight, and eyes shooting daggers at me. Givin’ me hell. Told you,
love, everything you need is inside you.”
“Good. ‘Cause
he’s my best friend, and I don’t want you two going all fighty/kill
each other/mortal enemy with each other again.”
“I know.
Don’t worry. We were just talking some stuff out, really. And Spike
was all – you know…” Buffy rolled onto her back and made lots of
dramatic arm gestures.
Dawn giggled. “Yeah, he kinda talks
with his whole body sometimes, doesn’t he? I should have known… The
way he was pacing around the living room like he’d overdosed on
caffeine or something – he was all anxious to burst out with stuff,
wasn’t he?” She sighed. “Stuff not for ‘kid ears’, I suppose,” she
added with some exasperation. “It’s kinda funny watching him
sometimes, ‘cause he can be so still and quiet, too.”
Dawn
shifted the conversation back to Buffy. “I was worried about you
being in hell, and well…”
“Yeah?” Buffy’s eyes encouraged her
to go on.
“The coffin,” she said in a rush. “Spike said you
dream about it a lot. About waking up there, being buried
alive.”
“He did?” He shouldn’t have told her…
“Yeah,
Willow said you were having all these dreams about hell, nightmares,
and Spike told me that that’s not what your nightmares were
about.”
“Oh,” That explained Spike telling her. “Yeah, I – I
do.” Buffy didn’t want to tell her how horrifying she still found
the nightmares. Sheer terror, unreasoning, everything inside her
screaming. Couldn’t breath, couldn’t… “I don’t have quite as many as
I did at first.” Damn it, her voice was shaking. She could hear it.
She hoped Dawn couldn’t. “And I – I’m hoping they’ll stop soon…” her
voice petered out. She didn’t want to admit how many she still had,
how frequently they came. You don’t have as many as you did,
she reminded herself. They will go away. Someday.
Dawn
studied her face, and Buffy had to force herself to meet the blue
depths of her sister’s eyes, as she tried to hide this horror from
the younger girl.
“Are you mad at them? At Willow and the
others? For bringing you back?”
Buffy sighed. “I really don’t
know, Dawn. Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I think I’m not,
or that ‘mad’ isn’t quite the right word.”
“Is it
roller-coastery – like your memories were?”
“Yeah, maybe it
is.”
“So you’re gonna tell them now, huh? And you’re telling
me first…”
“No!” The single word was strong. “I, um, I don’t
want them to know.”
“Why not? They should know.” Dawn seemed
surprised that she wouldn’t share this information.
“It would
crush them, Dawn. They think they did a wonderful thing – that they
saved me. If they knew… I just don’t want them to be
hurt.”
Dawn stared into her face. “But they hurt you, didn’t
they? A lot?”
“It hurts, yeah.” Buffy admitted quietly. She
paused. “ I know I’ve been… I’m working on it, I promise. And I do
feel like things are getting better.”
Buffy swallowed hard as
she felt Dawn’s arms close around her.
“I’m sorry it’s hard
for you, Buffy. But I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered. “I missed
you.”
For long, long minutes, the sisters lay wrapped in each
other’s arms. Buffy stroked her hands comfortingly over Dawn’s back,
and absorbed a few of her sister’s tears into the flesh of her
shoulder. Her own eyes burned, but she didn’t cry. She thought she
might be afraid to start.
“I think you should tell the
others,” Dawn said at last, moving away and dashing at her eyes. She
sniffed. “Willow’s spell last night? If she was really trying to
make you forget hell… Even if just that part of it had worked, it
would have made you forget heaven instead, wouldn’t it? And you
wouldn’t want to, would you? I mean, I think I’d want to remember
heaven. Willow should know. They all should.”
“I do want to
remember,” Buffy said. God, more than anything. “But the others…
telling them. Um, not yet. I just… In some ways I feel like I’m just
getting to know them again, and, right now, I’m not ready to answer
a lot of questions from them. But I think you and Spike are right,
that I should tell them. Just, let me do it in my own time,
okay?”
“Spike knows?” Dawn looked surprised. Buffy studied
her, concerned. But she didn’t look angry or hurt that she hadn’t
been told first – just surprised.
“Yeah. I’m not really sure
why I told him…”
“You probably just needed to tell someone.
And he can be kinda easy to talk to – you know, cause he really
listens, and stuff,” Dawn suggested.
“Yeah, he does, doesn’t
he?” Buffy agreed.
“We talked about it, you know. Me and
Spike. About heaven. While you were – gone,” Dawn confided. “Talked
about you and mom being together again. Happy. ‘Doin’ good deeds’
Spike said.” Dawn paused. “Did you, um… did you see
mom?”
Buffy tried to find the words to explain her
experience. “I’m not sure. It wasn’t really like that. I was still
me, you know, but it wasn’t like here. Everything was just soft, and
safe, and warm. And I could kinda feel mom, like I could feel
everyone else. But not in the sense that I could touch her, or
anyone else. It was just – I knew they were okay – the people I care
about. Or, at least, that they were in safe hands, being taken care
of, or that they would be, that someone was watching out for them.
Does that make any sense?”
Dawn considered. “Kinda.” She
paused. “Maybe it’s one of those things where you had to be there.”
Dawn looked down at her hands, and Buffy watched her twist them
together. “And you were,” she went on at last. “I’m thinking there
aren’t too many people on earth who can say that, Buffy.” She paused
again. “Probably none, unless you wanna count those near death
experience people. Do you know how lucky you are? To know what
heaven is like? You’ll probably go back there, too,
someday.”
I will, Buffy thought. Someday that will
all be mine again. Someday. And forever.
“I’m glad you
told me.” Dawn added. “You need to tell me stuff like this, Buffy.
I’m your sister. You said I was helpful, but it still would have
been better if I’d known what was going on. And I’m old enough to
know.”
“You’re only fourteen. Some things
–”
“Fifteen,” Dawn corrected.
Right. Fifteen. She’d
missed her birthday. What with the being dead and all.
“And
you were already the Slayer when you were fifteen,” Dawn reminded
her.
Buffy took a deep breath and blew it slowly out. “Being
the Slayer when I was fifteen wasn’t so wonderful, you know. I found
out a lot of things I still wish I didn’t know, and maybe I’m just
trying to protect you a little.”
Dawn rolled her eyes.
“Buffy, protecting me is fine. You know, from demons, and from all
the assorted wonderfulness of living on the Hellmouth. But regular
stuff? Just tell me. I hate it when people hide stuff from me, make
decisions for me because they don’t think I can handle anything. I’m
not a kid.”
Buffy looked into her serious eyes. “Okay. I
promise that I’ll try. And I – I’m sorry I didn’t tell you
right away, that you had to worry about me.”
Buffy rolled to
the edge of the bed and stood up. “And
Dawnie?”
“Yeah?”
“If someone makes me forget heaven
again, you and Spike know, and you can remind me,
okay?”
‘Yeah. Okay.”
“Promise me?” Buffy asked, a
certain wistfulness in her voice.
“I promise,” her sister
assured her.
~*~
Heaven.
Of course she’d been
in heaven. How could she ever have doubted it for a minute? She
should never have listened to Willow and gotten all worried about
it.
After all, ‘Chosen One’, right? She was bound to go to
heaven. Buffy was, like, a superhero or something, just like ‘Joan’
had said in the Magic Box. Dawn shifted restlessly, trying to ignore
the niggling little feeling of resentment. She was happy
for Buffy. Of course she was. What kind of a horrible person
would she be if she wasn’t happy to know her sister had been in
heaven? It’s not like she’d wanted Buffy to be in
hell.
Dawn flopped onto her back. Don’t, Dawn, she
told herself harshly. Don’t do this.
You are
glad your sister was in heaven. You are not secretly
wishing she hadn’t been. A moment of jealousy that Buffy probably
knew what her future held does not make you evil. You are
not thinking bad, evil thoughts. You’re just thinking. And
there’s nothing wrong with that.
Things are changing.
You’re changing. It doesn’t matter what you were before you
were Dawn Summers. You can be more than that. More than something
created to destroy the world. Better. You can.
Youcanyoucanyoucanyoucan….
Spike is changing, and you
can change too. It doesn’t matter much how you start out… Isn’t that
what he’d said? And Spike knew a lot, about stuff, and about evil.
He must know what he was talking about.
Dawn moved from
one position to another, unable to get comfortable.
Buffy
didn’t feel like she’d been with mom. That surprised her. Almost as
soon as Buffy died, Dawn had figured Buffy and her mom were together
in heaven. She’d worried a little about that portal thing, but since
Buffy’s body had stayed in this dimension, she’d figured diving into
it like that hadn’t sent her anywhere. Her conversations with Spike
last summer had sort of lent foundations to her heaven ideas, and,
after that, she hadn’t woven her imaginings around anything but that
scenario. They were together, happy, having fun and being all sort
of helpful-ish. Dawn wasn’t quite sure who she’d thought they were
helping, or how, because, really, who needed help in heaven?, but
she’d liked the general good-deed-doing idea. Maybe it was even
kinda like that ‘Touched By An Angel’ show Tara liked. Dawn had told
herself over and over that the idea was one of her lamest ever, but
she’d still fantasized about her mom and Buffy showing up to help
her through some big crisis. Or through one of those ‘this choice is
going to change the course of your life’ moments.
Or even
just to say hi. Maybe they’d look like strangers, but she’d still
feel something, and later she’d realize it had been
them.
Dawn pulled her extra pillow into her arms, hugging it
tightly.
But now… Weren’t you with the people you loved when
you died? Get reunited with them? Were you just – alone? Dawn didn’t
like that idea at all. Buffy said it had been wonderful. Perfect
peace. Like floating in an ocean of warmth and love or something
like that. Personally? Dawn thought she’d be a lot happier
surrounded by the people she loved, instead of floating in some huge
sea all alone, even if it was all peaceful.
If you were just
alone, maybe it didn’t matter all that much where you ended
up.
~*~
He was out there – on the roof. Buffy wondered
if she should try to talk to him, but decided against it. She was
exhausted, and if he was still in the mood to argue, she didn’t
think she had the energy to match him.
She’d decided against
going in to Tara, too. She’d stood outside the door of her mom’s old
bedroom, listening to the quiet sobs from inside, debating whether
or not she should knock. Even though they hadn’t spoken much since
she’d come back, Buffy felt somehow easier with Tara than she
did with the others. Tara seemed to radiate an inner peace that
Buffy had often envied, and that calmness appealed to her even more
now. But she didn’t know enough about the other woman to know if she
could be of any help to her now. Maybe Tara needed some time alone.
Buffy had moved away, promising herself that she would talk to Tara
in the morning.
She was still exhausted, but she’d
been laying awake for what seemed like hours, her active mind
denying her any real rest. She was happy about the talk with Dawn,
and hoped her sister would adjust to everything she’d told her. She
was concerned about Willow, upset for Tara, and as for
Spike…
She’d spent a lot of time with him since she’d come
back and, now, after the ‘moment’ they’d shared at the Bronze, she
wondered where it was all leading. The ‘moment’ had been hot,
amazing. And it had been accompanied by a couple of, um,
accessory moments.
He cared about her, for her. She
knew that…
Look at me! I... love... you.
You're all I bloody think about... Dream about... You're in my gut,
my throat... I'm drowning in you, Summers. Drowning in
you…
When he’d told her he loved her – before – she’d
told herself repeatedly that it was some sick obsession, that he was
incapable of really loving. No soul. Can’t love. Cut and
dried, right? Angel had made that pretty clear, and Giles had backed
that theory up.
But even then she’d wondered about it,
had felt that there was something there, inside him,
something beyond obsession. If she’d really believed he was nothing
more than a totally evil, mad stalker guy, she never would have
taken her mom and Dawn to him to be protected. She’d trusted
him with them. More than once.
But she hadn’t had the time or
the energy to dwell on it, to deal with it or with him. Her mother’s
illness and death, Dawn, Glory, monks and knights, the impending end
of the world as they’d known it… Somehow, trying to understand Spike
and their odd relationship hadn’t been very high on her list of
priorities.
She didn’t think Spike had really had the time to
think it through either, to understand what he’d been feeling, or
why. Certainly he’d been having major problems accepting it.
“Because this – with you – is wrong. I know it! I’m not a
complete idiot!...”
Not to mention the trouble he’d had
trying to figure out how to deal with it. Chaining her up had been
bad enough. She didn’t even want to think about the Buffybot, which
had totally squigged her out. “It wasn't one time. It was lots of
times. And lots of different ways. I could make sketches.” Buffy
could remember overhearing Willow telling Xander what the bot had
said to her. Unexpectedly, she felt a sort of guilty curiosity run
through her. Had Spike kissed the bot the way he kissed her?
Touched it the way he touched her? Just the thought sent a funny
little frisson of something weird racing along her nerve endings.
Buffy made a face. The bot was not something she wanted to
dwell on. Ever. And, apparently, for more than just the
‘eeeww, gross’, reasons.
Of course, even if Spike had
been having trouble dealing with his feelings, he hadn’t seemed to
have any doubt that they existed, or that they were real, and
strong. He’d clearly wanted to explore them, act on them. And he’d
seemed almost equally sure that she felt something, too.
“You can't tell me there isn't anything
there between you and me. I know you feel something.”
She
hadn’t thought so. Not then. In fact, she’d been upset, angry, even
disgusted. And strangely afraid.
“We have something,
Buffy. It's not pretty, but it's real, and there's nothing either
one of us can do about it.”
No, Spike. We. Do. Not. Have.
Something. She could still remember repeating that over and
over in her head. We. Have. Nothing. And she’d made her lack
of feelings for him pretty clear to him, too, hadn’t she? “The
only chance you had with me was when I was unconscious.” Not a
lot of room for doubt there.
But when Glory had tortured
him…
It had changed – things. Something. She wasn’t
quite sure what, but… It showed her something inside him, and had
made her look at him, think of him in a slightly different way.
”Angel had a soul. He was good.” “And I can be too. I've changed
Buffy... Something's happening to me.” She still hadn’t had the
time or energy to dwell on it, but something had changed.
Something in how she thought about the whole situation, about
him…
“Because Buffy... the other, not so pleasant
Buffy… anything happened to Dawn, it'd destroy her. I couldn't live,
her bein' in that much pain. Let Glory kill me first. Nearly bloody
did.”
“I couldn't live, her bein' in that much
pain.”
That had no longer felt like some sick
obsession. That had felt like something more…
The kind
of tortures Glory had subjected him to… hours and hours of
it…
And why? To protect Dawn, and to try to protect
her from having to endure any more pain. “I couldn’t live,
her bein’ in that much pain.”
That single act, and those
words, had changed something in her, in how she felt…
Oh, she hadn’t suddenly fallen in love with him, hadn’t had any
romantic feelings for him… It wasn’t like that. But when they’d gone
on the run from Glory, Spike hadn’t been with them just because he’d
stolen the Winnebago. He’d been with them because she fell they
could use his help, because she felt he had earned a spot in the
group, and because she knew she could count on him to put Dawn’s
well-being first. And, most importantly, because he had earned
the right to offer his protection.
That he’d taken his
promise to protect Dawn so seriously, even after her
death…
That meant a lot to her. A lot.
And
since she’d come back?
She was comfortable with him. More
than anyone on this planet, she was comfortable with him. But it was
more than that. She was worried about him thinking he was
responsible for her death, concerned that Willow had done
something – or tried to do something to ‘mess with his mind’.
Worried. Concerned. She cared about him. She didn’t
know how much or how deeply… but something was happening. And it was
more than just feeling at ease with him.
He mattered to
her.
The acknowledgement didn’t make her feel restless or
uncomfortable. It didn’t worry or upset her…
She tried to
recapture the images that had been running through her head when
she’d first seen him standing at the base of the stairs in her
house, looking up at her, and those that she’d seen in those first
hours, days, weeks… Buffy grimaced again briefly at the concept of
time. She’d seen images of them, the two of them, rapid fire
pictures… What? Where? They weren’t memories, were they? She’d had
so many problems with her memory since she’d been brought back that
she was hesitant now to trust its reliability. And the images were
so vague now, almost impossible to capture at all, much less to
analyze in any detail. But she’d always felt relatively confident in
the accuracy of her memories of Spike, and she did know that they
hadn’t felt like memories. They hadn’t felt familiar in any
way. They’d been of – other times. Buffy shifted as her brow
furrowed.
She didn’t understand…
A sense of loss
flowed through her, a deep, inexplicable sadness. Buffy curled onto
her side, drawing her knees up, and tucking a hand beneath her
cheek. She tried to reassure herself, as she had so often when these
images hovered on the fringes of her mind, teasing her, that it
would be okay. They aren’t lost forever. I’ll get them back, she
thought… Glimpses. What’s to come…
Maybe, when I get them
back, when I can see them again, I’ll even understand
them.
She tried to shrug off the encroaching sadness.
She didn’t want to think of the things she’d lost, the things she
was desperately afraid she was still losing. Your memories are
back now, she told herself firmly. Maybe you’ll stop feeling
like little pieces of yourself are dissolving into nothingness.
Gone.
You’re all here. Everything you need is inside
you. Spike had seemed very certain of that as far as her
Slayerness went. Maybe it’s true of everything. Or maybe you won’t
ever miss those things you’re afraid are gone. Won’t miss
them. Won’t even know what they were…
More than losing
anything else, she feared losing her memories of heaven. Already it
felt harder to hold onto them, to remember clearly. She wouldn’t be
able to bear it if she lost them altogether. She should write them
down, she thought, wondering why she hadn’t considered it before.
She felt a fleeting sense of amusement. It wouldn’t take long. She
could never find the words to adequately describe it, anyway.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. After she’d talked to Willow and
Tara. And made sure everyone was alright, that they’d all come
through the unusual events of the night relatively unscathed. She’d
write down her impressions then, commit them to paper.
She
missed it so much, the warmth and peace of heaven. No worries, no
pain, no death.
She didn’t regret being back – here. Not
really. Not exactly. It was far more complicated than
that.
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor pain, for the former
things have passed away.”
Buffy blinked, trying to… It
didn’t help. A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, rolling
down her face to fall onto her hand. More followed. Her knees drew
up closer to her chest.
~*~
Buffy rolled onto her
back, brushing the back of her hand over her face. Had she slept?
She must have. Nnnn… She arched her body, stretching her limbs
before she got up and moving quietly down the hall to the bathroom
for a glass of water. She really wanted some juice but the effort of
going down to the kitchen seemed too great. She wondered vaguely
what had happened to her dorm refrigerator. ‘Cause it would sooo fit
into that corner between the windows… She could stock it with some
of those little bottles of fruit juice. God, orange juice sounded so
good right now…
When she went back into her bedroom,
she only hesitated a moment before crossing to her window. She slid
it open, but instead of climbing out onto the roof, she turned and
sat on the sill, facing into her room, and pressing her hands
between her knees casually.
“Spike,” she
greeted.
“Slayer.”
It was a long time before she went
on. Spike, still looking out over the yard, seemed content to wait
for her to speak.
“I talked to Dawn about… about being in
heaven.”
“I’m glad, love,” he answered, his voice as quiet as
hers. “She needed to know.”
“Yeah, I’m glad, too. I’m, ah,
still not ready to tell the others, though.”
A
pause.
“It’s your decision.”
“But you don’t agree with
it.”
“No.”
“I just don’t –” she broke off. “We’ve been
over this.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to talk to Willow, too.
And Tara. Find out what she knows, what she meant about Willow
making her forget – again.” Buffy paused. “What did Willow do
to you?”
“To me? Nothing.”
“You said she tried to mess
with your head.”
“It’s not important, Slayer.”
“Did
she try to make you forget
something?”
Silence.
“Spike?”
“Not.
Important.”
“Why are you so stubborn?” Her voice was still
quiet, but her exasperation was clear.
“I wouldn’t talk
stubborn if I were you, love.”
Buffy hesitated, wanting to
push, to demand an answer. But she knew that tone, the way he
altered the mood of the discussion. Pushing wouldn’t help. The
subject was closed.
“There you go, extolling my virtues
again,” she said instead.
“There’s a lot of raw material to
work with.”
“You and Dawn team up on this whole thing, don’t
you? Dawn freely admitted that you’re tutoring her in The Faults of
Buffy Summers 101.”
He snorted.
“I – I wanted you to
know that I’m not gonna let Willow ‘get away with this’, that I’m
not just gonna let it go. But I can’t just kick her out of the house
– even if I haven’t quite figured out why she’s living here yet,”
she added with a degree of genuine perplexity. “I – it wouldn’t be
fair to her.”
“Slayer –”
“What?”
“I
jes’…”
She waited.
“You and little sis. I don’t want
anyone messing with either of you, fucking with you in any
way.”
“I know,” Buffy said quietly.
“You’re important
to me, both of you.” The words sounded dragged from him.
“I
know.”
They hadn’t once turned to look at each other, but
going over the points of their earlier arguments more calmly cleared
the air a little, and the silence they now shared was
comfortable.
“I should try to sleep,” Buffy said after a few
minutes had passed.
“You’re okay then, love?” he asked, voice
low. “Earlier…”
He’d heard her crying, she realized. Buffy
swallowed, hunching her shoulders, as her knees squeezed her hands
briefly. She hadn’t been sobbing, but she imagined the hitches in
her breathing had given her away.
“It was nothing,” she
hedged. “Just a – a moment, I guess.”
Another
pause.
“And now the moment’s gone?”
Her lips curved.
“Yeah.”
“Go to bed,
pet.”
“Night.”
“Night.”
“Oh, and
Spike?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s no swearing in this
house.”
His head swiveled slowly toward her, and his eyes
narrowed in disbelief. “What?” he sounded vaguely –
outraged.
She looked at him over her shoulder, brows raised.
“You heard me. My mom hated swearing. It was one of her unbreakable
rules. She made me sit in a chair, enjoying a ‘time out’ every time
I slipped up. Later, I got grounded. Dawn, of course, never
slipped up in front of mom. She had this amazing mom radar. I
always envied it. You would not believe what that girl got away
with…”
“Yeah, I would. And I’ll say whatever I bloody well
feel like saying, Slayer.”
One brow went higher. “Not in my
house, mister,” she said firmly.
Spike made some
indescribable sound of amusement. “Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s
better.” She nodded her approval at his acceptance of her authority,
and kept the smile off her face.
“In deference to Joyce,” he
jibed, deflating her. “Your mum was a fine lady.”
“Are you
implying I’m not a lady?”
“Pffft.” His eyes gleamed. They
drifted past her to the bed. “Not implying it, love.” His eyes came
back to her, running with slow deliberation over the curves of her
upper body. “’m counting on it.”
Buffy’s eyes widened a
little. She stared. She hesitated. She stood up and reached for the
wooden frame of the window. “You’re such a pig, Spike,” she finally
told him, and closed the window, tight.
His looked back out
over the lawn. “Oink,” he said with
satisfaction.
~*~
The dream felt odd, different. Not a
Slayer dream. At least, she didn’t think so… But something about
it…
It seemed more real than a normal dream, or perhaps less
so – neither of which made any sense. Nor did the fact that she was
trying to analyze the dream while she was having it. In the dream,
though, that analytical bent passed as perfectly normal.
The
montage of images seemed logical, even straightforward. They
seemed connected, but… but maybe – weren’t.
Flesh. Bare
flesh. Pale and hard, gleaming in silvery blue
light.
Her bed.
A breeze disturbed the curtains
at the window, causing them to play with the moonlight that streamed
in, lighting blue eyes.
A familiar voice, not his, the
tone huskier than was usual. Darker. Whose?
And…
blood.
There was blood.
Buffy flung up an arm, but she
didn’t wake.
Outside her window, smoke curled up into the
night sky.
~*~
Tara was washing the dishes. Buffy
crossed to the sink, pulled a dishtowel from a drawer, and started
drying the glasses the were draining in the rack. She hadn’t slept
much, and she was guessing that Tara hadn’t either. And a glance at
Tara’s face confirmed her other fears. She’d been
crying.
“Did Willow stay out all night?” she asked
gently.
Tara shrugged. “She might have. I haven’t seen
her.”
Buffy accepted a plate, dried it, and took another
before speaking again.
“You wanna talk?” she asked
quietly.
Tara kept swishing the sponge over the plate in her
hand. She rinsed it, and set it in the drainer when she saw that
Buffy’s hands were full.
“Dawn said that she overheard you
saying something to Willow about her trying to make you forget –
again.”
Tara had missed a spot on the plate in her hand, and
Buffy wiped it clean rather than returning it to her to be
re-washed.
“Tara? Can you tell me what’s happening? Maybe I
can help. Maybe we all can.”
“She’s done it a c-couple of
t-times,” Tara finally shared.
“Made you forget
something?”
Tara nodded. “We’ve been ar-arguing a little, and
she decided to ‘solve’ our problems by making me forget
them.”
“I’m sorry, Tara. I haven’t been paying a lot of
attention to what’s been going on, and I –”
“Don’t apologize
for that, Buffy. You’ve had a lot of things to work through since we
brought you back.” Tara pushed a strand of hair off her cheek with
the back of her wrist, and turned to her. “I can see it on your face
every day. You shouldn’t feel bad that you didn’t notice my
problems.”
“And Willow’s.”
“Willow doesn’t think we
have any problems,” Tara told her with some bitterness. “So
long as I keep my mouth shut and don’t express any
opinions.”
Buffy was shocked. That didn’t sound like Willow.
She’d often thought her friend enjoyed arguments. She always
seemed to have all the points she wanted to make laid out logically
in her mind. Sometimes she actually had them written out on note
cards. And for Willow to deny Tara her voice? That wasn’t like
Willow at all.
“What are you arguing about?” Buffy
asked hesitantly. “You don’t have to tell me,” she added quickly.
“If you don’t want to, or if it’s too personal.”
“She’s
b-being reckless. W-With magic. Using it too much.”
“In bad
ways?” Buffy felt fear well up.
“That’s not it, exactly.
She’s just using it carelessly, to make things easier for herself.
And that is bad.” Tara closed her eyes and took an audible
breath. “Magic isn’t a game, or a toy. It’s serious. It’s… it’s
almost obscene to use magic for things like – like making
decorations for Xander and Anya’s engagement party, or to do the
laundry or something. E-especially when we couldn’t use it for
s-something good, something important… like saving your mother’s
life.”
Buffy rubbed Tara’s upper arm in a movement meant to
comfort both of them. Tara looked at her from under her
lashes.
“That would have been so wonderful. I w-wish we could
have done that for you and for Dawnie.”
“Some things aren’t
meant to be, I guess,” Buffy said softly, sadly.
Tara reached
for the frying pan she’d used to make Dawn’s pancakes.
“I
asked her what she was doing last night. She claimed she just wanted
to help you. That it hurt to see you in pain, not sleeping well, not
being yourself. She thought if she could take that pain away from
you, make you forget about being –”
“I understand,” Buffy
interrupted.
Tara looked at her thoughtfully. “Is that what
you want her to do? Do you want her to help you forget? I mean – I’d
understand if…”
“No,” Buffy said softly. “That’s not what I
want.”
Tara studied her carefully, her eyes only moving back
to the sink when Buffy shifted a little restlessly under her steady
regard.
Buffy straightened, standing a bit taller. “Do you
think it’s time for an intervention?” she asked. After all, she
thought, why should the group only hold interventions for
her? And an intervention would take the onus off of her and
redistribute it onto everyone. Where is should be. In this case,
there was nothing wrong with sharing responsibility. “You need to
learn how to balance everything, Slayer. What and when you can let
go. Stop taking the whole bleeding world onto your
shoulders.”
“We have to make sure Willow really
understands…”
Tara looked at her. “I know I’m kind of quiet,
and that people p-probably think I’m not very assertive. But I c-can
be, you know. And I have made my feelings clear. After the
first time, I told her that I considered what she had done to me a
violation, like mental rape.
Buffy felt the shock of the
words runs through her.
“She knew how I felt and that still
didn’t stop her from doing it a second time. And then this thing
last night – with all of us. Just a little mistake in the forgetting
spell she was trying to cast on you, she said. And I – I’m not sure
if I believe her.”
“I’m so sorry, Tara,” Buffy said at the
desolation in the other girl’s voice. “So sorry.”
The two
women silently finished the dishes and wiped down the counters and
the stove.
“We’ll talk to Giles,” Buffy tried to offer some
reassurance. “Maybe there’s something we can do. ‘Cause something
isn’t right with Will, and I think she might need our
help.”
~*~
Willow was casually looking through her
pile of mail as she walked into the house. Her eyes lifted from the
third piece of junk mail offering her 0% interest on a new credit
card, and she froze. They were all there; Tara, Buffy and Dawn,
Giles, Xander and Anya. If it was dark, Spike would probably be
present too, she thought. They were grouped together in the living
room, and every eye was trained on her, every expression
serious.
“Do you realize I was surrounded, completely
surrounded by rabbits? Do you have any idea how traumatic
that was? And it was all because I didn’t know who I was or that
magical intuition that wasn’t vengeance related wasn’t exactly one
of my strong points. What if that had been you, and you’d been
surrounded by frogs? Would it be so simple to dismiss then? Just
think about that!”
“Altering memories is a
gross invasion of privacy. What happened to us seems to have been
incidental, a factor in a great many of your spells. But what you
did, or tried to do to Buffy and Tara – what could you have been
thinking – to try to alter someone’s memories, or take them from
them?”
“I don’t know a lot about what’s been happening
since I – left. And I realize I’ve been a little withdrawn lately. I
have some problems I need to work through, and I’d appreciate it if
everyone would just give me a little time and space and let me try
to do that. You told Tara that you were just trying to make me
forget things that happened to me – forget what happened while I was
gone. But I don’t want you to make that decision for me. I want to
work through things on my own. I have
to.
“Until I spoke to the others I thought this might
be just a one time mistake. But it doesn’t sound that way to me
anymore.
“My first responsibility is to Dawn and to
her safety and happiness. We came under attack last night. It was
good that Spike and I still had our fighting skills or we all could
have been killed when those vamps broke into the shop. That’s
dangerous, and we face enough dangerous situations. I don’t want you
or anyone pulling strings I don’t even know you’re tugging on. And
Willow? I’m sorry to say this, but if you can’t control this, you’ll
have to move out, to find another place to live.”
“
Giles and Anya thought they were engaged. What if they’d had sex,
or, er, something?”
“Willow, I love you. You know
that. You say you just want us to stop arguing, and for us to be
happy. Well, I want us to be happy, too. But I want to be happy
because things are right, because we’re right, and strong,
and care about each other. To get rid of my objections by making me
forget them – it’s just wrong. Couples argue, Will, and when we do,
I deserve the right to my voice. I don’t think I can exist in a
relationship where I’m not allowed that. My voice, and my
opinions. I told you how I felt when you violated my mind by
trying to make me forget arguments. But you did it again, almost
right away, and now expanded that invasion to our friends as
well.
Even Dawn had opened her mouth several times to
speak, but finally just shook her head and passed. Buffy squeezed
her sister’s hand.
Oh, it was all very civilized. And the
actual words coming out of their mouths were more kindly phrased.
Not so accusatory. They’d obviously practiced them. Had they
rehearsed together? Willow wondered, remembering how they’d done so
before confronting Buffy – who before this afternoon had been Miss
Can’t Say ‘Boo’ – with their knowledge that Angel had returned from
hell.
And they kept assuring her that they loved her, that
they were worried about her.
Concerned.
Deeply
concerned.
But it still came down to this: You messed up
big time, Willow. You screwed up, Willow. You were wrong,
Willow. And finally; mess up again, and we’re gonna kick your ass
out of this house, Willow. Away from Tara. We’re sorry, but
we’d have no choice. Blah, Tara’s emotional well-being, blah, Dawn,
blah, blah.
It all still amounted to an
ultimatum.
~*~
She’d been walking for a long time,
completely unaware of her surroundings. It wasn’t until someone
appeared in front of her that she seemed to come back to herself a
little. Enough to realize that she was not in the best part of town.
She was too close to the docks, and noticing them now, the dark
warehouses lining the streets looked empty and
foreboding.
Her eyes came up and met those of the man in
front of her. He wasn’t tall or broad. His face was scarred, his
hair long and unkempt. But she could feel the power radiating from
him.
Willow took a step back, belatedly preparing to defend
herself. She raised a hand.
He caught it in one of
his.
“No need for that, strawberry. I’m here to help
you.”
Willow met his eyes, and he
smiled.
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