147 Days
 

 
He had good days and he had bad days. This, he reflected as he watched Dawn deal the cards with a wary expression still in her eyes, was not one of the better ones. He hadn't meant to snap at her, and he hated seeing the way she'd jumped when he'd gotten short with her. Maybe he couldn't really feel guilt, not without a soul, but he came damn close whenever he put that look on her face.
 
He looked down at the table and smirked. "Really, Niblet? Think you've got a chance to beat me?" She'd dealt the cards for a game of Speed; even moving at half his normal speed, he could whup her skinny behind every time.
 
Dawn shrugged. "Well, we're playing Slapjack next, so I figured it was only fair."
 
He groaned. She liked that game because it was the only one that made him hesitate; every time he slapped her on the way to the pile, his chip gave him a warning. Besides, bluster and temper aside, he never wanted to hurt her. Even in play.
 
"You'd make a fine vamp, pet. Already got the instincts for torture." He grinned at her mock-offended expression and settled in to win a game of cards before her turn came around.
 
He begged off after the third round of Slapjack. He was starting to get a headache, and that wasn't helping his mood one bit. He slunk out to the front porch for a smoke.
 
Last night had been a bit of all right, even with the witches' latest trick making things more difficult. He'd saved the Watcher's ungrateful neck – that was sure to earn him some non-staking points for the future, always a good thing. And it had been a decent fight, though he still thought it would have been easier for him to patrol alone rather than taking the whole Scooby gang along. Proved his point, though. The Bot was not Buffy, no matter how much they all wanted to pretend otherwise. A robot could never be a Slayer, and with the fall closing in on them, the Hellmouth was starting to wake up. They were scraping by now – just barely – and he didn't like to think of what would happen come the annual apocalypse. The conclusion he'd come to was that they'd find a way around it, as the Scoobies so often did – an annoying habit he was familiar with from painful experience – or they'd be royally screwed. The smart money, what with them being short a Slayer, said the earth was definitely doomed. The thought didn't thrill him.
 

 
“I told you. I wanna stop Angel.” The incongruity of his next statement struck him funny, and a smile curved his lips. “I wanna save the world.”

The Slayer stared at him in utter disbelief. “You do know you're a vampire, right?” Her expression grew even more incredulous as he spoke, listing all the things he loved about the world.

“You got dog racing, Manchester United, and you got people. Billions of people walking around like happy meals on legs. All right here.” So maybe emphasizing how much he loved snacking on the innocent populous wasn't his brightest move ever, but at least she was listening.

They walked to her house in a tense, watchful silence. Slayer and Big Bad, side by side; yeah, they'd be an unstoppable team. Long as she didn't 'accidentally' dust him with that stake she still held in a death grip.

 
 
Not much had changed in the past four years to make him welcome the end of the world with open arms. Sure, no more happy meals on legs for him, but he liked Manchester's chances this year. And to top it off, he had all these... attachments. Dawn, first and foremost. But Tara and Willow were sweet birds, though Red could be scary when she wanted. Anya was always good for a little demon-y commiseration amongst all the goody-two-shoe-ness that permeated the whole Scooby team. Even Harris was tolerable when you got enough beer in him. Walking in on him dancing around like an idiot and singing along to one of Dawn's Backstreet Boys albums hadn't hurt either; that had been blackmail material enough to get him to lay off the 'I-oughta-stake-you's for a whole week.

He shook his head and lit up another cigarette. This was the problem with hanging out with humans; at some point, they stopped being food and started being people he sort of had to care about. He was worried about them – not just about Dawn, but about all of them. It wasn't right. Wasn't what a vamp was meant to do, but he couldn't help it. Hence the case of the crankies he'd been nursing all day.

The door opened behind him. He automatically shifted over on the steps so Dawn could sit upwind of his smoke. “Hey, Li'l Bit,” he said as she settled herself next to him. “Isn't it about your bedtime?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, 'cuz I'm, like, eight years old.”

“Got school in the morning, is all I meant. Need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, yeah?”

“Ugh, don't remind me.” She planted her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and stared out into the night.

“Those girlies still giving you a hard time?” he asked. He stubbed his cigarette out in the flower pot Dawn had set on the porch for that purpose. “Want me to scare them for you? Could bite one of 'em for good measure.”

Dawn giggled and leaned against his shoulder. “Nah, that's okay. They're stupid, anyway. Like it's my fault I had to go to summer school. It's not like I'm some kinda J.D. or something. ” She twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “Janice is nice, though. We've got a lot of classes together this semester. I think it'll be okay.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes. Dawn had met the little twit in summer school and they'd become fast friends. But Janice was, to use Dawn's terminology, a J.D. – at least in his opinion. The girl didn't have a thought in her head beyond boys and having a good time, she used altogether too much eye makeup, and she wore skimpy little outfits that made him flinch every time he looked at her.

And his Victorian roots were showing.

“Glad you got a friend, Bit,” he said begrudgingly. “Just make sure you two stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dawn said. She stood up then and peered down the street. “Hey, is that... is that the Bot?”

He followed her gaze. Yeah, this would make his night complete. The Bot was making its way down the street in a shambling fashion. As they watched, it butted up against a fence, backed up a bit, and walked directly into the fence again.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, and hurried down the street to rescue the thing. A gash across its forehead, exposing the inner workings of the Bot, was the likely culprit for the stumbling and bumping. The Bot smiled up at him brightly as he took its arm and led the way into the safety of the house.



***


He sat at Willie's, staring morosely into his glass of whiskey. There wasn't enough liquor in the world to soothe the emptiness that had been consuming him. He snarled at the Grolshank demon sitting next to him; the thing had been poking him with its spiny appendages all night. It swayed drunkenly on its bar stool and landed heavily on his arm. One of the spines drove straight through the leather of his duster and embedded itself in his arm. He growled, snapped the spine off, and twisted the Grolshank's neck till it gave a satisfying crack.

Damn. Killing things didn't make him feel better, either.

He slammed down the remains of his drink, tossed a twenty on the bar, and pushed through the crowd to the door. The assorted demons and sad-sack humans hastily moved out of his way. It wasn't until he was standing in the cool night air that he realized he was still in game face. He shook his demon away before slamming his fist into the nearest wall. He roared with mingled pain and grief.

The hollowness in his gut wasn't something that could be filled by blood or booze or hot wings. It was the pain of losing the woman he loved, no matter that she never could have loved him back. It was a pain that wasn't easing. Wasn't anything he could do to change the way he felt - there was no enemy to throttle into submission, no way to bring her back. Her face, her crumpled, broken body, haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. And he knew, he just knew, that wasn't going to be changing in a hurry. The eternal greyness of unlife alone stretched out ahead of him. If not for Dawn, if not for the promise he'd made, he'd have met the sunrise long ago.

“Buggering fuck,” he muttered. He sucked the blood off his knuckles and stormed away from the bar.



***


Dawn wasn't in her bedroom. He felt panic spread its wings in his chest, beating against his ribs. It was the middle of the night, so where the hell was she? She knew better, was intimately aware of all the things that went bump in the night. He gripped the windowsill so tightly the wood started to splinter beneath his fingers. If she'd snuck out with Janice, he was going to eat them both.

He took a deep, calming breath and stretched out his senses. The witches were in their room, talking softly. He could hear their heartbeats pitter-pattering along. And then he heard it – a third heartbeat, slow and steady in sleep. He crept around the corner of the house and peered through the window into Buffy's room.

The Bot lay on the bed, eyes open and staring blankly, and cords running from her body to the car battery they used to power her up. Dawn was curled up at her side, head resting on the Bot's shoulder, fast asleep.

He slumped against the window frame. “Ah, hell, Little Bit,” he whispered. “What are we gonna do?”




148 Days


She was gone.

She couldn't be gone.

But she was gone.

And it was his fault. Again. He spun around in a frantic circle. “Dawn!” he hollered. “Niblet, where are you?”

Fuck.

Double fuck. Couldn't catch her scent, not over the greasy odor of burning rubber and the stink of exhaust and the stench of those filthy hellions.

He ran for the bike. One little girl couldn't have gotten far. Unless she'd been snatched.

No.

She was fine.

She was going to be fine.

He was going to find her and she was going to be fine.


***


He couldn't find her. Seemed the hellions had headed out of town, though he couldn't say why, what might have chased them away.

But still no Dawn.

The Magic Box was dark and empty. He growled in frustration and pointed the bike for Revello Drive. She had to be there, or he didn't know what he'd do.

“Dawn!” He could smell her, of course, but was it just her lingering scent or had she come back? And there was something else, something familiar that teased at his brain for a second. He could hear two heartbeats from above him and there was a faint trace of blood in the air. If she was hurt... “Dawn, are you there?”

“I'm here,” she called from upstairs.

Relief swept through him; anger followed hard on relief's heels. He slammed the door shut as she walked slowly down the stairs. “Thank god! You scared me half to death.” He thought about that for a second. “Or more to death. You...” he pointed an accusing finger at her. “I could kill you.”

“Spike.” Her voice was soft and a little hesitant, but she looked no worse for the wear.

“I mean it. I could rip your head off one-handed and drink from your brain stem.” Ah, the power of worry; always ample inspiration for new and creative threats.

Dawn paused on the last step. “Look,” she said, and turned her eyes to where the Bot was coming down the stairs.

“Yeah?” He was not impressed. “Seen the bloody Bot before. Didn't think she'd patch up so...”

And that was when it registered.

The second heartbeat. That familiar scent. The coppery aroma of blood that wasn't Dawn's.

He could do nothing but stare at her. Buffy. Buffy. Buffy. His brain tried to catch up with his heart – his cold, dead heart that he swore had just begun to beat again.

She looked back at him, big dark eyes full of shadows and trepidation.

Dawn was talking, but it didn't compute. His world narrowed down to her, alive and breathing and standing in front of him. She squirmed a little under his stare, glanced down at her unbuttoned shirt, and moved to close it.

“Spike?” Dawn said. “Are you okay?”

He couldn't speak for a moment. “I... What'd you do?”

“Me?” she squeaked. “Nothing.”

Buffy folded her arms around herself and slowly raised her eyes to his again. He couldn't take this in. It was too much.

“Her hands,” he said with a nod in her direction. Buffy tucked them quickly behind her back, and he began to understand what had happened.

“Um, I was gonna fix them,” Dawn said. “I don't know how they got like that.”

“I do. Clawed her way out of a coffin, that's how. Isn't that right?”

Buffy looked around uncomfortably. “Yeah. That's... what I had to do.”

“Done it myself,” he said, very quietly. She looked him in the eye and for just that one moment, all the pain and sorrow and grief of the entire summer melted away.

Buffy was back.

Spike shook himself out of his daze; she needed him and he wasn't going to let her down. Not again. That was a promise to himself, and Spike always kept his promises.



The End