Part 12:

Pennies from Heaven

Dawn waited all week to see what Buffy's reaction would be when she discovered Spike had been transformed, but without luck. Whatever their mutual schedules, they seemed always to prevent a casual encounter. Of course, this only served to increase Buffy's suspicion about his activities. She claimed that only the fact that she was overwhelmed with work and now the added task of finding a place for Willow and Giles before they returned kept her from setting up a vigil in his crypt to catch him unawares.

To herself, Dawn thought that her sister was simply reluctant to encounter him again and was trying to fool herself with these excuses. Not that I can really blame her, I suppose. Even if she was never in any real physical danger, he still hurt her badly. She sighed, and settled more deeply into the couch with her mother's old copy of The Joy of Cooking, waiting for the object of her thoughts to appear for his first lesson - and hers. Funny how I never thought of him as dangerous, even when I first met him. I think we all got used to him hanging around, mooning over Buffy and helping out just for the fun of beating things up. We all forgot that he was still a vampire underneath it all. All of us except Xander, that is. Combine that with a crush on Buffy that isn't anywhere near as secret as he thinks it is, and I see why he was so eager to tell me that Spike had tried to rape her. We're all just fumbling along trying to do what we think is best - sometimes I wonder how we manage to communicate at all. Look at me, before Dr. Chambers turned me on to that psychology course.

But if any of them had any idea of how much pain he's in now over everything he's done... She exhaled heavily. Some of them still wouldn't care. So I'll be his friend, because it's now that he really needs one.

She slipped one last bookmark into a recipe she thought might be easy enough for Spike to start with, and set the book down on the table, exchanging it in favour of some of the research notes that she had made on the blood theft from the hospital. She had found several instances of blood shortages across the southern part of the state. A company called Incruentus was said to be gearing up for emergency production of their artificial blood substitute to temporarily take up some of the demand, and as a result their stock price was soaring. Medical technology stocks had always been one of the darlings of the market, but the crisis was driving Incruentus into realms previously only occupied by dot-coms. A sharp knock on the front door dislodged a niggling thought and sent it skittering off lost into the back of her brain. Dawn got up to let Spike in.

"Afternoon, Platelet," he said affably as he entered.

"Y'know, Spike," she said, "You really might want to rethink the whole vampire nickname thing... because it so doesn't suit you any more."

He blinked owlishly. "Ah. Never thought of that... Dawnie, then."

"If that's the best you can do," she said sternly, "you'll have to stick with 'Platelet'. I hate being called Dawnie." Only Tara could really get away with it. She swallowed hard against the sudden lump in her throat, forcing her thoughts back to matters at hand. "Come on back to the kitchen, I've got some recipes for you to look at."

**********

Dawn surveyed their results with a critical eye. "I dunno... it doesn't really look like the picture, does it?"

"I told you we should have stirred it more, Bit. Maybe it will look better if we let it cook a while longer." He shrugged. "I thought it tasted okay."

"Yeah, if your favourite snack for the last hundred years has been O negative, it probably tastes great," she retorted. "We'll give it another half hour. Now, how about we make with some of those cool martial arts moves that all you vampires seem to know? Uh - I mean ex-vamp... oh, you know."

"How about we eat first, then fight? I'll need all my energy to keep you from doing me hurt," he smiled. He was having more than a little trouble reclassifying himself, too.

"No way. If we do that, you'll just end up getting all sleepy in front of the TV like my dad always used to do after dinner. Teach me now, eat later." Her eyes twinkled. "I've got ice cream for dessert, after."

"Right then. After you." Spike swept her a courtly bow and directed her out the kitchen door to the back yard.

**********

"I don't know what hurts more," Dawn complained much later. "My arms or my stomach." She lay back into the couch cushions and pressed her hands to her swollen midriff.

"There's no one to blame for your stomach but you," Spike replied from where he sprawled at the other end of the sofa. "I think you ate more than I did. And I did warn you about trying to break that hold."

She tilted her head forward until she could see him again. "You know, Buffy's got afternoon shifts all this week. You could come over for a while before you have to go to work."

"And let you get a chance at a rematch?"

"Well, yeah. That was kind of the idea. How about tomorrow and Thursday? - oh, but not Friday. We have to pick up Giles and Willow from the airport."

A band tightened painfully around Spike's heart. "So the prodigal's back, is she?" And welcomed with open arms, like as not. "Hugs and puppies all around?" Quit your whining, you git. You've already received more than you deserve.

"Buffy said that Giles said..." --he couldn't help but smile at how much like school gossip she made it sound--"that the magic was gone, but that Willow was still having trouble dealing with the guilt over killing Rack and Warren."

Oh, I know that song. "Just give her time, Bit. She'll come back eventually." Though it might take years.

Dawn's face clouded. "I don't know if I want to. She tried to kill me too - turn me back into mystical glowy Key energy."

"It's not like I didn't try, back in the day," Spike observed. "Yet here I am. You don't hold it against me."

"I know. It's still just... different, somehow. It doesn't make any sense, really - but with you it just never seemed... personal, you know? Maybe it's because we only have the memories, but it never really happened. Seeing as how I only met you two years ago."

"But it's what I would have done."

"Don't beat yourself up about it." She sighed and let her head fall back to the cushions. "Forget it. I don't have the strength left to analyze either one of us tonight."

He willingly let the subject drop, but had to venture the question he'd been wanting to ask all night. "Dawn? Would you give me some information about Buffy, if I asked? It's nothing personal," he added quickly, afraid she might misunderstand his motive.

She eyed him warily. "I suppose that would depend on what you want to know."

"Well, I've..." Suddenly he didn't know how to begin, and started over. "Since I've been working, I've put away a bit of cash, and I thought... I don't really need all that much to keep me, and..." Why is this so bloody difficult? "I'd like to give it to the two of you. Can you tell me where she banks and give me the account number so I can go deposit it?"

Dawn was silent for so long that he was afraid she was going to refuse him. "You can't just give it to her? No, I suppose she'd be all weird about it," she said, answering her own question. "I don't suppose there's anything wrong with letting you know." She went to the writing desk by the wall and rummaged through bank statements from the previous months, finally copying the necessary information onto a slip of writing paper that she handed to him.

"Here you go. Maybe I can get you to do something for me in exchange."

"Anything Buffy wouldn't end up having to kill me for, Niblet, you know I'll try to do for you," he said as he got to his feet again.

"You've probably heard about the blood theft from the hospital." He nodded, and she continued. "Can you ask around and see what's being said about it?"

"I'll do what I can," he promised. "Ear to the ground, like - though I don't think my new associates have quite the same connections as the old ones did."

"Any information would help." She followed him to the front door and held it when he opened it. "Same time tomorrow, then?"

"I'll be here."

Part 13:

Your patience and support is beyond all rational understanding, really. I've had a terrible couple of months - my mother died in September and I took a week off of work to deal with the consequences of that. And I've felt, ever since then, that I've been playing catch up in a race that started weeks before I got there. I've hardly been able to write at all.

I know some of you are waiting desperately for the chapter where Buffy finds out what has happened to Spike. I promise, it's already written and it's up next. Just a bit of tweaking from dear Sundown, and I should have it for you next week.

But the ride is longer and more painful than I thought.
----------------------

The Prodigal

Xander couldn't keep still; he paced up and down the row of seats at the arrival concourse.

"Give it a rest, Xander," Dawn teased from where she sat. "You'll wear out the carpeting."

"I can't help it," he insisted. "She's coming back. Willow's coming home and we can finally get back to the way things are supposed to be."

"Giles warned us that she was still recovering," Buffy reminded him, not wanting his expectations to make him too optimistic. "It might be some time before we see normal again."

"Whatever it takes," he maintained. "Guys, it's Willow!" He looked at his watch, then impatiently at the arrival board again. "Where are they? Their flight landed nearly half an hour ago." He threw himself into a chair that protested this cavalier treatment.

"Don't forget that they still have to clear customs," Dawn pointed out. "And maybe Giles is bringing in some strange magical stuff and they're both being searched." Her eyes lit with some glee at the prospect.

Minutes later, the doors to the customs and immigration arrivals area swung open and passengers began to emerge. Xander started up every time he saw a red-headed woman emerge, but none of them proved to be Willow. The original rush of passengers slowed to a stream, and then to a trickle, and there was still no sign of Willow and Giles. The three of them had almost given up hope when the doors opened once more and a thin, pale, auburn-haired woman emerged, clinging intently to the arm of the older leather-jacket-clad man beside her.

"Oh my god," Buffy breathed. "Is that Giles? And if it is, then is that--"

"Willow," Xander finished for her, and rushed forward to embrace his oldest friend.

Willow stiffened at first, but released Giles's arm and returned Xander's embrace.

"It's so good to have you home again, Will," he said when he was finally willing to release her.

She ducked her head. "It's good to be home again." When she raised her eyes again, she looked over at Buffy and Dawn who were standing apart from the rest of them, and her face pinched as if she were tasting something unpleasant that she'd been told was good for her. "Buffy... Dawn... I'm so sorry for everything." And then, suddenly and shockingly, she burst into gulping sobs.

**********

The drive home in Xander's car was completed mostly in silence, and Buffy cast regular anxious glances from the front seat. Dawn had offered to ride the hump in the centre seat, but Willow had insisted on being next to Giles and so sat with her legs uncomfortably folded up in front of her. She leaned onto his shoulder and kept her eyes closed.

Willow emerged somewhat from her weariness when they pulled up at the Summers home. Every tree at the house on Revello Drive had been swathed with yellow ribbons, tied in bows and draped between boughs. On the porch, like a pair of citron sentinels, stood two yellow balloons shaped like crayons.

"The crayons were my idea," Xander explained proudly, which drew the first unforced smile from Willow since she had returned. "I made the sign, too," he bragged, as they opened the door to reveal a large banner bearing the message 'Welcome home Willow'. They set to the business of sorting out coats and luggage in the foyer.

"No everyone just get comfortable," Dawn commanded. "Dinner should be ready in half an hour." With that announcement, she marched off into the kitchen.

"Is that... really a wise idea?" Giles asked Buffy in a low voice when Dawn had left. "I've heard tales of some of her creations."

"Actually, she's improved a lot," Buffy replied. "It seems I'm always getting evening shifts, so she's been making dinners for most of the summer. We've only had one or two tragic food mishaps."

"Yeah, like that incident with the noodles," Xander added as he took a seat on the couch.

"I heard that!" Dawn shouted back from the kitchen. "That had nothing to do with me - it's not my fault we had a defective colander."

**********

By unspoken agreement, they kept the conversation during dinner to lighter subjects. Xander took up most of the main course with a description of his meteoric rise to a position of some real authority in his construction firm, and Willow and the others made appropriately appreciative noises.

While she had never doubted her friend's talent and would never have for a moment begrudged him his success, Buffy wondered to herself if his advancement weren't equally due to the fact that Sunnydale suffered from a greater than usual amount of 'environmental damage', and the tendency of skilled workers to vanish under questionable circumstances. Still, she kept these thoughts from her face and she in turn regaled the others with stories of the peculiarities of her DoubleMeat co-workers. But it wasn't until Dawn began to describe some of her classes at the rebuilt high school that Willow had begun to tentatively respond with advice for the young scholar.

I should have known that was what it would take to bring her out, Buffy reflected. Even more than the magic, academics were always what Willow loved best.

As if sensing the change in mood at the table, even Giles finally relaxed his wariness somewhat and began to spin tales of his native land. Buffy finally began to realize just how much he had ached for his home for all his years in Sunnydale doing his duty, and let slip away the last lingering resentment over his departure last year. By the time dessert was on the table, it was almost as though the events of the previous year had never occurred.

Almost. Buffy sometimes thought that if she turned around just so, she would see Tara again, moving with quiet grace, and she wondered just how much more difficult it must be for Willow to be back in this house again. She got up and began to help Dawn with the task of clearing the table, leaving Xander to try and find a way to reconnect with the friend he had almost lost and had brought back from the brink of despair.

Dawn was filling the sink and gradually loading dishes into the waiting bubbles. She handed Buffy the drying cloth with a grateful look. "You know, I'm sure we have enough money saved by now to get someone in to look at the dishwasher," she said.

Buffy smiled. "Maybe. On the other hand, I don't get to spend enough time with you as it is. Look at this as an opportunity."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "This wasn't what I had in mind when I made that complaint. I was thinking about something in a more mall-like setting."

Her sister whacked her playfully with the cloth. "Keep dreaming."

**********

Buffy left Dawn to put away the dishes and returned to the dining room, where Willow had finally relaxed enough to laugh at Xander's jokes. She turned as Buffy came in. "That didn't take long."

"Yeah, we've become an unstoppable force in the kitchen," Buffy joked. "No dishes dare stand against us." She pulled out her chair and sat down again. "There's nothing like the DoubleMeat sanitation video to improve your efficiency."

"From the sounds of things, it might almost be preferable to have demons attacking the restaurant again," Willow said. "Your abilities are wasted there - and I don't just mean the mystical ones. You shouldn't have to put such limits on yourself, Buffy. When you've got powers that most people--"

Her face abruptly lost all colour and twisted with pain. She clutched at her stomach and pushed away from the table all in one desperate motion, and then she was pounding up the stairs almost before her chair had clattered to rest on the hardwood floor. Buffy and Xander stared incredulously after her, and heard the bathroom door slam upstairs. Dawn came into the doorway, a forgotten pot dangling from one hand. "What's going on?"

It was a few confused moments before Buffy noticed that Giles showed no surprise at all at Willow's behaviour. A terrible, awful suspicion sank sharp claws into her gut and she turned to confront him.

"What the hell have you done to her?" Not her mentor anymore. He was still a trusted friend, but one whose authority was no longer even the slight hold on her that it had once been. Now that he was setting himself in opposition, outside the pale in a place where she believed him to be very wrong, she wasn't afraid to challenge him.

Long minutes passed. "It's very complicated," he began at last.

"Try me," she snapped impatiently. "You'll find I understand a lot more than anyone ever gave me credit for."

Giles removed his glasses and rubbed his face wearily. For a moment, Buffy's heart ached at the old, familiar gesture, but she quashed the emotion ruthlessly.

"Well?"

"We couldn't remove the magic," he confessed when he had himself under control again. "It had become too ingrained into her own life force, become a reflex action. Removing it would have been tantamount to killing her. So instead we... walled it off. Blocked her access to it while leaving it to sustain her life. Any attempt to directly control it causes her pain. It's a sort of geas, you could say. And it was decided to make me the key to it."

Buffy wasn't going to confess she didn't know the word; she'd get a definition later. His meaning was clear enough. "You're controlling her mind?"

"Who the hell gave you the right?" Xander demanded, surging up from the table as though about to swing on him.

"I did," Willow said quietly from the bottom of the stairs, her face pale but composed, and Xander collapsed back into his chair. "I knew I might never be able to control it, and I... I don't want to be dead." Even after all her years on the Hellmouth, Buffy thought the most disturbing thing she had ever seen was the sudden flood of tears down Willow's face while her friend went on speaking, unaware, her face untouched by any emotion. "Maybe someday I'll be strong enough, but for now this is what has to be done to me." She turned her attention back to Giles. "Rupert, get us a cab. We need to go."

"You're leaving?" Dawn protested. "I thought that you and I might bake some cookies together later. You know so many good recipes." I just want to make you feel better, somehow. "Remember how you said that baking... relieves inner turmoil?" she offered tentatively.

The sudden naked anguish on Willow's face drove them all back a step. "You think that baking cookies is going to make things all right again? I watched Tara die in front of me and tasted her blood on my face. I killed two men in the most horrible ways I could imagine because I thought that no one could possibly suffer as much as I had in that moment!" Her voice rose in shrieking crescendo. "I thought it was better to end the entire world than to go on feeling pain like that and you want me to bake fucking cookies?" Willow spun and fled the house for the relative sanctuary of the front porch, slamming the door behind her.

"I just thought it would be fun," Dawn said in a child's small voice, and crumpled in tears into Xander's embrace. Buffy moved closer to encircle the two of them with her arms. The sound of Dawn's sobs and Giles's quiet voice on the phone summoning a taxi were the only noises in the house for some time.

"There's no need to disturb yourselves further on our account," Giles said as he gathered their things in the foyer. "We'll wait outside for the cab."

Part 14:

Revelation

"She hates me."

Buffy turned from her work in time to see Dawn fling herself into the couch, resulting in a squeal of springs. She dumped her backpack unceremoniously on the floor beside her.

"Who, the couch? Sounds like it, from the way you're treating it. Be careful, because we can't afford a new one."

"We can't afford anything," Dawn grumbled, momentarily distracted, but she returned quickly enough to her complaint. "No, I meant Willow. Willow hates me."

Buffy sighed, and put down the bank statement she'd been trying to reconcile for the past hour. "Well of course she doesn't, Dawn," she said, getting up and moving to sit beside her on the couch.

"She must," Dawn insisted. "When I went to see her last week about the blood bank thefts, she could barely even pretend to be interested. And this afternoon I stopped by because I though she could help me with my advanced algebra... Buffy, she wouldn't even see me! She made Giles come tell me that she was too busy with her own work to do trivial problems." She drew her feet up onto the couch and rested her head despondently on her knees. "It's because of what I said about the cookies, I just know it. How was I supposed to know she'd take it the way she did?"

Buffy slipped a supportive arm around Dawn's shoulders and her sister leaned against her heavily. "Willow's still grieving for Tara, honey," she said gently. "When people are in pain, they sometimes say things they don't really mean. You and I have both done the same thing; it doesn't mean we don't love each other - in fact it probably means just the opposite, since we know how to be the most devastating." When this didn't get a response, Buffy just held Dawn close until she felt her begin to relax in her arms.

"Does this mean I'm trespassing in your territory?" Buffy asked gently. "Because aren't you the one who's supposed to be 'insightful girl'?"

Dawn smiled weakly back at her. "Yeah, well... I don't want to make you feel like I don't need you at all anymore," she said.

"I appreciate the thought," Buffy replied, getting up from the couch. "But you know, you're welcome to make me feel unnecessary in other ways," she said, going back to the desk and indicating the pile of bank documents there.

"No way," Dawn laughed openly now. "That's all yours, I've got my own math homework to do. And speaking of... I'm going to get some of it out of the way since it will probably take me most of the weekend without expert help."

"Gee, thanks," Buffy said wryly. "Last one done has to cook," she challenged.

"You're on."

**********

Dawn took her time going through the first few pages of her algebra; it wasn't really to her advantage to finish before Buffy did, because doing so would mean she would have to eat her sister's cooking again. A knock on her bedroom door drew her out of her alphanumeric reverie.

"Okay if I come in?"

"Sure. Does this mean I lost the bet?" she asked hopefully as Buffy opened the door.

"Dawn, what is this?" Buffy asked, holding up the bank statement that looked to have at least three distinct colours of highlighter on it. Her face was drawn and pale.

Something about the diamond hardness in her sister's eyes made Dawn choke back the first response that came to mind - that's a bank statement, dummy. Buffy didn't look like she was in the mood for joking around. "I don't get what you're asking," she said, instead.

"Look at this," Buffy said, placing the sheets carefully and deliberately on the desk. "I can account for everything we have to pay out. Here's the mortgage, the water and sewer bill, and the electricity." She indicated several highlighted items. "Here's the cheque for groceries, and another one for your Phys. Ed. fee - late, of course." She grimaced. "Among other things.

"And here's the income." A much smaller number of items were highlighted in another shade. "Dad's support payments for you - thank god for automatic withdrawals and deposits. These are my paycheques. So what are those?" One accusing lavender fingernail pointed at three items marked in bright pink.

Dawn's mind stuttered. That must be the money Spike put in. I can't tell her that, can I? What do I tell her then? And how the hell does she keep her nails looking like she's just had a manicure when I know she was out slaying all last night - and mine always look like I had them for lunch? "I... don't know."

"You don't know," Buffy repeated, her voice chill. "Like you didn't know last year how all those items from the Magic Box got into your room. Or why the stores kept forgetting to take security tags off of merchandise."

Buffy looked at Dawn, and her voice and resolve broke. "Oh Dawnie, I know it's hard living like this, barely making it from month to month. But you can't keep stealing stuff just so we have money for treats. Please, you have to understand I'm doing the best that I can..."

Dawn didn't answer, and could only watch as her sister's face fell, her hopeful look gradually replaced with tired anger. "Buffy, I... I don't know what to tell you," she managed at last.

"Maybe some time at home will help you decide," Buffy said, in a cold, flat tone. "You're grounded until I get to the bottom of this." She turned away and closed the door carefully behind her with a click that was more deafening than the loudest slam could have been.

Dawn leaned her face into her hands at her desk. I have to see Spike, but of course crypts don't have phones. Why couldn't he get an apartment like a regular guy? God, I hope he keeps our scheduled time on Monday, because we can't go on this way - they can't. He's got to talk to her.

Part 15:

Reconciliation

Buffy didn't particularly care for her job, but she had become resigned to it for the sake of the necessary money it brought in. She would perform all of her duties with good grace and the best cheer she could muster, but every day there was one thing that still could push her to the point where she would swear she had to quit and find something better. Today, taking the used fryer oil and salvaged grease from the grill out to the recycling container behind the restaurant was the one thing. Slayer strength made the task of transporting the bucket easy enough, but the recycling container had clearly been designed by a committee that had never intended to get its hands dirty testing it. The opening for the waste was inconveniently high, and not really wide enough to handle the flow. As a result she ended up with stains all down one side of her uniform where it had spilled, and oil in her hair. Great. The DoubleMeat hot oil treatment. This day just can't get any worse. I really need to get out of here and kill something tonight.

There was a large convex mirror mounted on the wall in the back lane so that the staffers at the drive-through window could see cars waiting at the order board. Movement in it caught her eye. A lone figure with blonde-tipped hair and dark clothing was making his way up the alley. Note to self: never, ever, even think the words 'it can't get any worse'. No matter what I said to Xander about having forgiven him, I still can't deal with having to talk to Sp--

Her head snapped around to stare down the alley as her brain presented her with two irrefutable facts: she had seen him coming in the mirror, and the sun hadn't yet set. Okay, the Gem of Amarra could protect him from sunlight, but Angel destroyed it. Could there have been another? She turned back to the mirror in time to catch his wave, just a spread of the fingers of one hand in front of his chest, acknowledging that he'd been seen. But nothing can make a vampire visible in a mirror...

"Hello cutie," he said with an ironic smile as she spun to face him.

She could feel her lips moving, but no sound was coming out. That explained things: she'd been sucked into some crazy alternate dimension where vampires reflected, but that didn't have an audio track. The grease bucket dropped from her nerveless fingers and clattered loudly on the alley pavement, dispelling her wild notion.

Buffy didn't resist when Spike took her hand in his and pressed it to his cheek. His skin was as soft as she remembered, but warm now - so warm. Beard stubble pricked at her fingertips. He closed his eyes, his dark lashes beaded with unshed tears, and turned his head to place a gentle kiss in her palm. He slowly drew her hand down to his chest, pressing so that her fingers splayed firmly against him and she couldn't fail to feel the living heat of his flesh or the thud-thud-thud of his pounding heart. "I told you I could change," he said softly, opening his eyes again to look deeply into hers.

She stumbled back, pulling her hand away and cradling it in the other as though it had been enchanted somehow, its senses unreliable. All that kept her upright was the wall of the alley, and she leaned back heavily against it. "How?" she asked in a breathless whisper. "Why?"

"How was an accident," he replied wryly. "And as for why..." Spike took a deep breath. He stepped forward to reach for her but she shrank back, the fabric of her uniform scraping roughly over the bricks. He stopped and thrust his hands into his pockets, suddenly finding his boots immensely interesting. "I couldn't stand the thought of what I'd done to you. If the chip wouldn't keep me from hurting you, then I had to find something that would. And I suppose... I wanted to be someone that you wouldn't have to be ashamed of any more. So I went looking to win back my soul."

He stood motionless for some time before her with his eyes downcast until she replied shakily: "It seems you ended up with quite a bit more than you had bargained for."

He took his hands from his pockets to wipe his eyes and looked up at her again. "Joke's definitely on me this time, hey? Don't know why I should have been surprised; my plans always gang agley more oft than not."

His meaning was clear from the context though the words were nonsense to her. "But how... how is it possible that a vampire could even want to have his soul returned? I would have thought all of you were big with the 'no conscience, no remorse' deal."

"Because I love you," he said, as matter-of-factly as though there could be no other reason in his world for anything he would ever do. "Because you're worth that much to me. You say you can't love me - and I know that you don't," he said, before she could protest. "But you asked. That's my answer. I know it wasn't normal, but I wasn't ever really normal about love, even casting aside the whole 'creature-of-the-night' aspect. I've always been love's bitch, and I don't bloody well care."

Buffy wrapped her arms around herself, her thoughts reeling. "Why are you here today, telling me this? Why now? Why didn't you tell me when I first saw you that night in the graveyard?"

He sighed. "I was going to stay away from you, because the sodding irony of finally having a soul is that now I know how much better you deserve than me. I didn't want you to think I was just trying some new trick to win you back. But then Dawn said that you had found out about the money I'd been putting into your account, and had accused her of messing about again." Buffy started guiltily. "Just rank ignorance on my part, pet," he confessed. "I don't know a whit about bookkeeping. I had no idea you'd find out so quickly."

"But..." Buffy was beginning to hate the whiny sound of her voice, and the way she didn't seem to know any word but why. He knew what she meant, though. He always knew.

"Because I hurt you, and I'm sorry. To the end of my days I'll be sorry. I would give my life - again - to be able to take back that one day. Or ten minutes of that day. Or only the few seconds where I decided that forcing myself on you would make you want me again." He looked into her eyes, accepting his burden of guilt. "But I can't. I can't go back and change the past, and I know that sorrys can't ever be enough. All I can do now is go on, and try to be better than I was.

"This is part of it. You need the money; I'm not taking it back. If you don't want to spend it because it's from me, that's fine. Put it into a college fund for Dawn, or buy her an extravagant Christmas present or something. But I give you my word it's my money, honestly earned."

"What would you know about honest work?" Buffy cringed inwardly at the cynical tone she heard in her voice, but couldn't stop herself.

His smile was sad, acknowledging her censure. "Same as you've learned, pet. You do what you have to do - no matter how menial - and you do the best job of it you can, so you can take care of the people you love."

Her breath caught in her throat, but she was saved from having to reply by the sudden awareness of just how long she'd been outside. "Oh god, my job. They've probably added my name to the disappeared list and given my locker away by now. I have to go," she said, bending to retrieve the bucket before hurrying over to the kitchen entrance.

"Goodbye, Buffy," Spike said. "I'll not bother you here again." He began to walk back down the alley the way he had come.

She hesitated at the door. He's changed so much - because of me. "Sp-- William?" she called, and he turned back to her. "I can't love you, but... I can forgive you. I do."

Peace blanketed him; his shoulders settled under the weight of the gift she had just given him. The image of her in the doorway blurred and threatened to run down his face.

"And... I do care. I can't ever have too many friends who care about me as well." Her voice faltered, and she looked away. "If you want... I could use some help patrolling after work tonight. If you don't have... other plans."

His answering smile outdid the sun for brightness. "I'll be here."

**********

True to his word, he was at the door waiting as she locked up at the end of her shift. He held her backpack while she wrestled the heavy door closed and manipulated the code lock.

"I thought we might head to Restfield tonight," she said, as she accepted the pack again. "I haven't done a sweep through there as recently as I should have."

"Whatever you think is best, pet - love - ah, Buffy." He grimaced. "Sorry."

"It's all right, I don't really mind that much. I know it's mostly just a habit. Though pet always makes me think of someone's dog." She smiled, and looked up at him thoughtfully.

He ran a hand nervously through his hair at this inspection. "What? Have I sprouted horns now or something?"

"No, it's just... you look so different with darker hair. Older."

He snorted. "It's not the years, it's the mileage."

"Did it bother you, when I called you William, before? I won't, if it does. It's just that... Spike doesn't really seem to fit you all that well anymore."

"You can call me anything you want, love," he replied softly. "I like the sound of my name in your mouth."

She decided it would be best not to address that response, and so led the way without speaking further. He followed her in silence, always a few paces behind.

**********

Buffy set her pack on a convenient headstone just inside the cemetery gate and opened it. "I have your coat, if you want it."

Spike pulled the worn leather duster from the bag. It was permeated with memories of what he had been, and what he had wanted to be. "No. It looks better on you. You should really see about getting the sleeves shortened, though," he said softly, as he held it out for her. Buffy hesitated, but let him draw the duster over her arms to settle comfortably on her shoulders. He smoothed the lapels gently. "I told you her story. This coat once belonged to a warrior, you know. Now it does again."

They put conversation aside for a time as they turned to the business of hunting, and they moved together as though they'd been training for weeks. When she needed an axe for a demon instead of a stake for a vampire, she put out her hand and his was there to hand off the weapons. He knew her every move, having studied her for so long; first to kill her, then to woo her. Buffy knew she ought to find the notion creepy, but instead it seemed... comforting, somehow. Like the coat had been, it was something that just felt right. She'd had to move in to save him a few times - his reflexes were nowhere near what they had been - but he was a match for most of the individual graveyard denizens they encountered.

If only their entire relationship had been built on how well they fought vampires together, she would have welcomed him back with open arms. But he couldn't help but keep offering her his whole self; a gift that was too painful to hold and too fragile to simply let fall from her hands.

They found themselves leaning up against a low wall near the edge of the graveyard after a while, pleasantly tired and not too dusty. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You don't need my permission."

"What made you fall in love with me?"

Spike's brows knit as though he were facing Final Jeopardy and trying to decide how much to bet. "You burn. Twice as bright for lasting only half as long. I was reminded again of how bright you are just today when I saw you in the alley. You were so beautiful there in the sunlight. Like you were on fire inside."

"Oh please. Covered in oil and smelling of grotty burger grease?"

He shrugged. "Didn't notice. Doesn't matter. You're always beautiful to me. So am I a moth drawn to a flame? Do I have self-destructive urges? Probably." He kicked idly at a clump of dirt. "Don't ask me questions I don't have answers for. All I know is that as the feeling grew it consumed me, and there wasn't a single thing I could do about it. But if I can tell you anything else, I'll trade you truth for truth, Slayer." When she declined to offer another question, he asked the one that had been foremost in his mind the whole evening. "Why am I here?"

It was her turn to look puzzled. "That's kind of deep, isn't it? For the middle of the night, I mean."

He smiled. "That's when those questions are traditionally asked - in the dark night of the soul, when we're farthest from God. But what I really meant was, why am I here with you? Why did you ask me to come patrol with you tonight?"

Speaking of questions without answers... "I think..." she drew out her answer, hoping the words would make sense when they came, "that I wanted to face you in a place where I was comfortable. A place where I knew I was the one in control, so I could see what's changed."

"To test me. Test yourself dealing with me."

"I suppose."

They moved to sit together on the dew-damp grass, leaning against the convenient backrest of a doublewide headstone. Beloved Husband... Beloved Wife... He declined to point out this irony to her, having come to prefer his body mostly unbattered, and waited long for her to speak again.

"I guess I didn't really believe it until now." She spread one hand across her belly in an unconscious imitation of an expectant mother's protective gesture. "I know when vampires are near, I can just feel them - and ever since we... since last year, I was able to tell you apart from all the others. Not just vampire, but Spike's near." She twisted viciously at several helpless strands of grass that sprouted from a crack in the stone.

"But now," her face bore an expression of confused loss, as if she couldn't understand why the absence of this sensation was something she regretted. "I... can't feel you any more. And I suppose I should really be glad for you, but..."

"Didn't know what we had 'til it was gone," he said woodenly. "I always felt you, too. Of course, most vampires would - you frigging glow, love - and since there's only one Slayer around here lately, it had to be you. And now that I'm just William the Wanker again... It's better we don't feel it any more. Won't go leading us into the mistaken sentiment that there's any special connection between us. That's what got us in trouble the last time."

"Why are you here?"

"Thought that was my question."

She shook her head impatiently. "No. Why did you come back to Sunnydale? You're human again. You could have gone anywhere in the world, started a new life for yourself."

"Because every night before I sleep I hear your voice crying out to me, over and over, to stop - and I don't." He dropped his chin to his arms where they rested on his knees. "I'm here to pay for what I did to you. For everything I've done to you. You're one of the few who is still alive and able to grant me forgiveness. But all my dead will rise to meet me at the last trump and judge me there. Either I do enough to be granted absolution," he said darkly, "or I burn."

His pessimistic mood shook her, and she took refuge in levity. "Whoa. Grim much? You've been sitting around in graveyards too long."

"God's own truth, Slayer."

Something finally clicked from their conversation of that afternoon. Something that had been nagging at her unconscious all through the final hours of her shift: "When did you see Dawn?"

He drew himself up to begin weaving a lie, but then saw the ice and steel in her eyes and knew it wouldn't do. Nothing but the hard truth would do from now on, if he ever thought he could be of any use to her, ever have even a portion of her trust. "She came to the crypt the day after I first saw you. Invited me to dinner. It... wasn't really possible to say no." He'd begun to slide irresistibly again into thoughts of suicide; soon even Clem would have been no obstruction to achieving his goal. He'd willingly damn his soul again, just to ease the pain of being alive.

And then Dawn had blown into the crypt and brought sunlight with her. He had clutched at her like a drowning man suddenly desperate to live. Maybe it was that she was still, underneath everything, the Key, the raw creative power of the universe that denied chaos in all its myriad forms. Or maybe, more simply, it was just that she was a seventeen-year-old girl for whom despite everything the world still held bright promise of happiness.

Hard eyes surveyed him yet. "And then... she asked me to come back. Teach her some fighting moves and in exchange she'd teach me how to cook. It's been... fairly regular, since then. That's how I got your banking information, too." He met her gaze squarely, willing her to see that he'd left nothing out, was attempting no deception.

She smothered the fizz of laughter that wanted to rise inside her, like a soda opened on a hot day. How dare he make her laugh at a time like this. Still... The blind leading the blind, Dawn teaching Spike how to cook. She reached deep inside and made herself stone. "I don't want you seeing her anymore. The two of you should never have gone behind my back that way."

He nodded, not a flicker of protest in his eyes. "Knew it wasn't really right. Had to end as soon as you found out."

She carried on, intent on convincing herself as much as him. "Because what would happen if Mrs. Kroger or someone else from Social Services came over on one of their little surprise visits and found you there alone with her? How could I explain some unrelated guy in the house with my underage sister? It's bad enough I have to work evening shifts all the time and can't make supper for her or help her with her homework, or..." Her voice trailed away in distress.

"Buffy," he said softly. "I do understand. You only want what's best for Dawn. I was being self-indulgent, because she brings a light into my life that I didn't have before. I'll stay away. My word on it, if that still holds weight with you."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, from under lowered lids. She demonstrably loved her sister more than her own life, but still couldn't really understand how Spike might want to go out of his way to spend so much time with a teenage girl. Unless the alternative were so awful... "Is it... hard? Being human again, I mean."

"Human or vampire, I'd probably still... It's the soul makes it all difficult, see? It's one thing to prance about a vampire, saying 'ooh, look at me, I'm all evil', quite another to look back and know how monstrous and detestable a thing you truly were."

Buffy was chilled by the self-loathing she heard in his voice. Her own voice seemed stopped up somewhere in her chest, at least, that's what she thought the pain was.

"I hear them all the time now, the voices," he went on. "The children are the worst. Used to lull them until I could get them somewhere where no one would hear them, then set them to screaming - it sharpened the taste, I always thought. At first I just wanted to die, hearing their screams again, and this time knowing there was no one but me to blame."

Her hand crept over her mouth to stifle the gasps of horror and grief that shook her shoulders.

"I still think about dying, but it comes and goes, now. Know what keeps me around, most days?"

Oh god, I'm sorry. I can't be responsible for you along with Dawn and all the rest of the world. I just can't, it's too--.

"It's the thought of the expression on Dawn's face, the wounded look in her eyes if she knew I'd given up so easily. So many men have just walked out of her life: your father, Angel - even though she had the good sense to dislike the grand poof - soldierboy... I couldn't bear it, if I became just another man who disappointed her. Likely she'd draw me back from the grave to haunt her."

Her thoughts were writ plain on her hurt face, and he felt endless regret as he added, once again, to her pain. "In order to disappoint you, love... you first would have had to believe in me."

He got to his feet and brushed stray blades of dead grass from his jeans, then wordlessly offered her a hand up. He released his hold as soon as she had stable footing. "Be sure to tell her thanks for everything from me, and that I promise to keep in practice with the cooking."

She didn't follow as he headed back to his crypt, thinking vastly important thoughts like the nature of good and evil, and what he might have for dinner.

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