It was a much chastened Dawn that helped lug the boxes home. They had both decided that Dawn would bug Xander into driving them over to collect the rugs and larger pieces that the two sisters couldn’t carry. For the first time in a long while they were on the same page and working together. But Buffy didn’t fool herself by thinking that everything was now all right between them. As much as she loved her sister, Dawn was getting too much for her to handle and Buffy was worried that her baby sister was going to really go off the tracks.

“Where shall we store Spi…his stuff?” Dawn stared at all the boxes that they had piled up in the hallway. Buffy had already carried the ones with his journals in them upstairs along with one containing his clothes, jewellery and personal items.

“Yeesh, what’s with the boxes making a mess in here.” Willow sauntered out of the dining room slurping from a mug; she paused and prodded one with her sneakered foot.

Dawn watched as Buffy’s face took on a mulish and angry cast to it and hastily intervened. “Buffy, why don’t you take the first shower? I can get these into the cellar.”

Buffy blinked in surprise at Dawn’s unselfish actions and offered a small smile of thanks to her sister as she escaped up the stairs, clutching a box to her chest. Ignoring Willow’s calls after her, she carefully placed it on the floor in her bedroom next to the others and dashed into the shower, leaving Dawn to tell Willow about Spike’s death. Deep down Buffy accepted that it would make little impact on the redhead’s life and she would probably shrug it off.

~~~~~~~~~

“Really? Dead? Huh…so why has Buffy brought all his stuff here?” Willow took a loud drink from her soup and tucked a loose lock behind her ear. Dawn watched Willow slouching unconcerned on the couch and she really began to wonder if the redhead had a soul. There was a weirdness to her that was starting to really scare Dawn.

The teen grimaced slightly when Willow slurped from the mug and then licked the rim trying to capture a drop of soup before it ran down the side. There had been not a single ounce of compassion from her over Spike’s dusting. Okay, he and the witch had a shaky start but Spike had fought side by side with her all summer and they had become friends of sorts-- if not companions in arms. Or so Dawn had thought. Maybe something weird happened to her when she did the whole ‘Raise the Buffy’ thing. ‘Maybe she had to give her soul up to get Buffy back?’ Dawn took a step back and squealed when she stepped into Tara’s arms.

“What’s happened?” Tara asked as she took in the mess in the hallway.

“Spike’s been dusted.” Willow dropped her mug carelessly on the coffee table and stood up. “Tara, baby, we have to meet Xander and Anya, remember?”

“Willow!” Tara’s horrified exclamation stopped the Scoobie in her tracks.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Willow cocked her head in confusion at her girlfriend’s unexpected shouting at her.

Dawn burst into tears. She had been teetering on the edge of weeping from the moment Willow had appeared and only the redhead’s casual reaction had stalled them in their tracks. But Tara’s genuine shock and horror at Willow’s callousness had triggered them.

“Oh baby girl, come here.” Willow held out her arms towards Dawn and gasped when the teen turned to Tara and flung her arms around her, babbling about sharks and vamps staking Spike and how Buffy had been too far away to help.

Willow glared at Dawn, pissed that she had made Tara yell at her and that Dawn had rejected her offer of comfort. Willow wanted to yell at the young teen but didn’t dare, not in front of everyone – she could wait.

~~~~~~~~~~

The warm water did little to ease the chill around her heart. Buffy stood under the showerhead, staring blindly ahead. Her hands automatically soaped her body and shampooed her hair as she tried to think of a way that she could’ve saved him. She was unwittingly copying Spike’s own desperate thoughts, trying to find a way to save him before the vamps had been able to dust him.

‘Maybe if she had moved to the right and slipped through the bushes she might’ve been able to sneak up behind them and pull the goons off him.’

Sighing, she rinsed the conditioner from her hair and turned off the water. Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped her hair in a towel and then grabbed the grey robe she had brought in with her and slipped it on. Buffy reached over and wiped off the steam from the vanity mirror and started at her reflection. Big haunted eyes stared back at her, dark rings adorning them both. She stuck her tongue out at her image, unconsciously mimicking Faith’s own actions in the same mirror. ‘When did I get so skinny?’

She gave her teeth a desultory scrub with her toothbrush and then slipped out into the hallway. Pausing to eavesdrop on the conversation below, she heard Dawn being comforted by Tara and Willow’s voice muttering darkly in the kitchen. Unwilling to go down and face them, Buffy disappeared into her bedroom and Spike’s journals.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the worst day of my life. Watching that bastard screwing Dru in front of me. One minute he was handing her the freshly killed heart of a shop girl and then they left. Or so I thought… When I wheeled the blasted chair around the table, followed by that damned puppy, I heard them.

Something in me had to see. So I peered around the corner of the pillar and there she was, skirts up around her ears, legs splayed while her precious daddy fucked her. I hate him. Why is he so determined to destroy me? Why doesn’t she love me enough to say no to him? What did I do wrong? All I have ever wanted was to make her well. That was why we came here, and this is how she repays me? I’m in a wheelchair because of her, and she leaves me to rot as she plays with Peaches?

She leaves me crippled and alone while she screws the poof cross-eyed – why did this have to happen? Venomous bitch and yet, I still adore her. She is tearing me apart.

Buffy pulled Spike’s red shirt around her and tried to get comfortable on her bed. The words that she had read made her heart race and anger fill her. Part of her knew that Angelus and Drusilla had been intimate, but to read Spike’s stark words and heartache brought it all home to her once again. She flicked through the journal dedicated to the entire sorry time of Angelus, her heart aching more and more. At the time she had suspected that they had been sleeping together, but to read in graphic heartrending detail made her ache for Spike. It also sickened her to her stomach. Finally she gave in and closed the leather bound tome and tucked it back into the box.

She flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, one hand resting on her stomach and the other trailing over the side of the bed and caressing the journal’s spines. She could still hear Tara soothing Dawn and Willow slamming out of the backdoor and muttering under her breath, but Buffy didn’t care. She couldn’t, not after letting Spike die. She was starting to lose herself in the mire of depression that only seemed to lift when she had snuck into Spike’s crypt to sit with him. And now he was gone, her lifeline to sanity – she had let them stake him.

Unable to resist, she pulled another journal out of the box at random, curled on her side and flipped it open. His flowery handwriting was so unlike anything she associated with the punker vampire image he’d carefully cultivated. It was from a bygone era, copperplate perfect. Buffy ran a shaking hand over the blue ink and began to read. It was one of the older ones and she was hooked by his flair for storytelling.

The last thing I needed was to get involved in a poker game when Dru had buggered off and I was trying to track her, but I was fishing for info. The last sighting of my wicked girl had been heading into Transylvania and here I was sitting in a dodgy Inn playing cards with a bunch of berks who looked suspiciously like Gyppos.

The ale was piss poor and the smell of my fellow card players was eau de dung mixed in with a whiff of donkey piss. All I can say is, I’m ruddy glad I don’t have to breath otherwise I’d be puking up my toenails and that last border guard I ate-- who had looked a bit too much like Peaches for my liking-- all over their boots. I was digging for any sighting of my sire, and bless her mad little socks, Dru was not a subtle bint.

Buffy giggled as she read on about his search through Transylvania and his subsequent discovery of Drusilla’s whereabouts.

Honestly, I know she’s as mad as a march hare, but it takes the biscuit when I find Dru masquerading as one of Drac’s Brides and lounging around his crappy castle in a see through nightie. Not to say the view of her sublime body wasn’t a sight for my sore eyes, but to smell Drac all over her was almost the final straw. To cap it all off, the mad cow decided I had to win her hand in a mighty duel – according to her the baby imps had told her it was the only way I would get her back. Sometimes I wonder why I want her so much…

“Me too, Spike. I always wondered what you saw in Drusilla the Wonder Skank as well,” Buffy giggled.

Well, we’re heading off to Greece. I’ve always wanted to see the Parthenon, should be good for a giggle. I think Dru is a bit pissed off with me. The mighty duel she was hoping for never really came about. Instead, I spent the night getting off my head on Absinthe and still managing to win Dru back with a Royal Flush. The poncey git gave me a marker for the eleven quid he owed me out of the pot – said he’d be good for it. We’ll see.

Buffy flinched at the knock on the door; she slammed the journal shut and put it away. “Buffy, Giles is on the phone.” Tara’s apologetic tone soothed the agitation the interruption had caused.

“Thanks, Tara.” Buffy peeped around the door and took the portable from her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, Dead Boy is dustville?” Xander grinned. “That’s too bad…Not! I guess we won’t have to worry about him hanging around like a bad smell anymore.”

Anya dished out the meal without saying a word, exchanging a brief glance with Tara and then sitting down next to Xander. She daintily picked at her food, trying to ignore the speed in which Xander was shovelling his dinner into his mouth while talking all the time about how life would be easier without Spike hanging around. Tara sipped at her iced tea, trying not to gag at the sight of the half chewed food Xander was displaying with each word he uttered. She let her hair hang over her face, acting as a sort of shield, and tried to ignore Willow who chimed in every now and then agreeing with Xander. She was more worried about Dawn and Buffy. She didn’t want to listen to the pettiness being displayed, she wanted to get dinner over with and head home to see if she could help out Buffy and Dawnie. She could see that both were badly effected by the vampire’s final death.

She was unsurprised by Dawn’s reaction and only slightly surprised by Buffy’s obvious despair. The blonde wiccan had suspected that a friendship had been brewing between the two warriors since Buffy’s return, but not to the depth that she had realised. Buffy’s devastated face when she had answered the door to get the phone had startled her and all she wanted to do was try and help both of them, but Willow had insisted on going out for dinner. So Tara had reluctantly let her girlfriend pull her out of the house, leaving Dawn to carry the boxes downstairs and Buffy locked away in her bedroom talking to Giles.

Tara was pulled from her worries by the sound of Willow’s voice.

“I mean I get that Dawnie is sad, we all know she had a crush on Spike. But Buffy being all bad moody is just weird.” Willow sighed.

“Well, not really. They were friends at the very least. Patrolling nightly and then there was that drinking night. Giles told me all about it before he ran away to England. And then there was the way we found him in the yard all sad because she was brought back… Oh, and what about the saving her life when Sweet nearly got her to burn to death!” Anya chattered away, listing more and more incidents to explain the closeness of Buffy and Spike, ignoring Xander’s attempts to interrupt.

“Ahnn, you’re making them sound like they were dating or something!” Xander exclaimed in disgust.

“Well, he was very attractive and very much in love with her. And recently she has been so sad and spending so much time with Spike. How are we to know what happened?” Anya shrugged and popped a spoonful of pasta in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Swallowing, she added, “Also, she has seemed to want to spend more time with him than any of us.”

Willow’s eyes narrowed at Anya’s final observation. It was bad enough that Buffy had kept the secret of where she had been from her. But the possibility that Buffy and Spike might’ve been closer than fighting buddies really bugged her. She was supposed to be Buffy’s best friend and she should’ve known so that she could organise the others into an intervention. Part of her was glad that Spike was dust, so that Buffy wasn’t under his influence. Willow’s brow furrowed. She needed to see if there was something she could do magicwise to help Buffy forget about heaven, Spike and also to help Tara forget about her worries about magic abuse. ‘As if there was such a thing!’

“Hey, Wills, maybe you could mojo something up to make Buffy feel better?” Xander joked.

“NO!” Tara bolted up from the table, her hands clutching her skirt.

Willow blinked in surprise at the vehemence in Tara’s voice. “Honey, don’t be silly. Sit down; your dinner is getting cold. As if I would do anything like that!” she giggled, trying to cover up and failing badly. The other three saw the guilt in her eyes.

“Xander, Anya, I’m sorry to say this in front of you but, Willow, if you do anything, I will leave you,” Tara promised as she sat back down, flinching away from Willow’s hand.