Author’s Note: Thanks as always to Kar for the beta work. Feedback very much appreciated. Big thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing.

In our seventh installment there is much backstory.


Chapter Seven

Buffy awoke feeling good for once. She'd had a good time the night before, just sitting there with Spike watching people dance. Spike, apparently, didn't dance, but she finally talked him into it. It seemed to upset him somehow, and yeah, maybe both of them were better movers on a killing field than on a dance floor, but it hadn't been that bad. She had felt really good for the first time in a long time, even knowing full well that she looked like a giant dork. Moving her body and having fun, she was starting to feel like her body was a living, breathing, natural thing instead of a corpse she was trapped in.

In the shower she realized other parts of her body were starting to wake too. Nothing even remotely sexy had occurred to her since she'd crawled out of the dirt, not even in that brief moment of startling stupidity when she'd thought all her dreams of Angel were about to come true. But dancing had made her feel a little sexy. With the water running over her she was suddenly aware of herself as not just a living being, but a living female who probably shouldn't be thinking about non-living males in the shower. She turned down the temperature.

When she got to the shop, it was quiet. She caught Tara staring at the picture of Lara behind the counter. She was still adjusting to the idea that Tara was a widow and that Xander had married and divorced a second time. That her friends had met and lost other people over the years still threw her sometimes. And no matter how many questions she asked, she would never really know what she had missed all those years.

Spike didn't show at training, so she put Tashi through her paces herself before the girl went patrolling with her Watcher. Buffy decided she'd do a solo patrol later. It has been too long since she'd done an independent sweep, and she was starting to remember the thrill in that.

The younger slayer assured her that Spike had called and begged off. Buffy was a little put out that he hadn't mentioned his little trip to LA at some point the evening before, but Tashi explained that he took a regular monthly trip to Los Angeles, where Faith and Lieuko were both buried, Lieuko to be near her family. She didn't know why Faith was there.

"He and Faith were close?" Buffy asked carefully.

Tashi shrugged. "He doesn't talk about it much."

Upstairs in the shop, Tara told her the same thing. "What about Lieuko? What's the story there?"

Tara sighed and spent a minute carefully placing vials on a shelf. "Drusilla." Tara pulled down the collar of her shirt to display four ragged scars. "I tried to stop her. So did Xander. And Jess. And Lara. It was ugly. Jess and Lieuko? I'll grant you that I wasn't around with you and Xander first met, but Xander made a lot of comments about history repeating."

Buffy studied her shoes. Another Harris in deep with a slayer. "Where was Spike?"

Tara sighed. "With Anne." Buffy took the cup of tea Tara offered. It made her stomach feel more settled, and she wondered what was in it. "You have to understand, Spike was always there for Lieuko, always. She got used to him being there, and I think after what happened to Faith he never wanted to let her be in real danger. But he couldn't leave Anne. She was sick, Buffy, really sick, and he was afraid that Drusilla..."

Buffy knew what he was afraid of. "He was afraid Drusilla might want to help him keep her."

Tara nodded. "He wasn't wrong. She burst into the hospital, covered in Lieuko's blood. But Anne had already slipped away."

Slipped away. Such a sweet-sounding concept. Buffy knew it hadn't been that easy, not for Anne or Spike.

"Spike thinks it's his fault," Tara continued. "If he'd been less protective of Lieuko, she might have been stronger, quicker, more ready for Drusilla. Something like that."

Buffy shook her head to banish the memory of Kendra's dead eyes. "No one is ever ready for Drusilla."

Tara nodded. "Jess lost it for a while. It was bad. Anya even tried to come take him back to England with her."

She had figured out from other things that had been said and by Tashi's near total ignorance of all things Xander that he hadn't been an active White Hat for a while. She had avoided asking him about it, and she was a little relieved that now she wouldn't have to. But there was another question that needed to be asked.

"Tara, what happened to Faith?"

Tara stared at her cup for a long time. "I don't know all the details. I know when she got out of prison she went to work for Angel. I know that after he fulfilled his prophecy and became human, he dismissed her, and she came here instead."

Buffy felt a corkscrew in her heart. "Dismissed her?"

Tara wouldn't meet her eyes. "Something happened with her Watcher, Wesley. You knew Wesley, right? He died in a fight right after Angel got his heartbeat and a few weeks later, Faith was in Sunnydale talking about how she wanted to help and how Angel was getting out of the supernatural business."

There was more there, she could tell. Dismissed seemed like such a deliberate word choice. "But she's buried in Los Angeles," Buffy pointed out. It still amazed her how Faith had beaten the odds. A slayer making it into her thirties was practically unheard of, and Faith had almost made it over the hill. "Did she die here or there?"

"There." Tara still wouldn't meet her eyes. "Drusilla had a busy decade. Apparently she wanted her family whole again, and she was raving about there being too many slayers. She said the same thing when she killed Lieuko." Tara cleared her throat. "Angel said at the funeral that Faith sacrificed herself for him."

But he let Drusilla get away, Buffy mused. Although maybe that wasn't fair. A human up against an insane, hypnotic, old vampire only had so much chance.

"When Drusilla showed up at the hospital..." Buffy prompted, though she already knew the answer.

Tara nodded. "No more Drusilla."

Buffy sighed, rather too aware of the effects of Tara's tea. She'd have to tell her not to make it so strong the next time. Then again, she was sleepy but she hadn't felt an itch on her skin the entire time. No more Drusilla. When Spike got back, she'd have to buy him a drink.


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Xander watched Jess and Buffy chatting over dinner and felt every muscle in his body tense up. It wasn't Buffy's fault, not really. She was just being Buffy. Which was the problem. Because no matter which father his son had gotten from, the slayer obsession had definitely been passed on. She'd break his son's heart without even knowing it, and certainly without meaning it, and he'd rather head the crush off at the pass if at all possible.

"Dad faked out a bunch of army guys to get you a bazooka? No way. That's so... Hollywood action movie. How come you never told me about this?"

Buffy laughed and Xander smiled at his kid. "Those were my specialty, back in the day." He'd never talked about the bazooka, because there was no way he could think about that night without thinking about Willow. Over the years, he had trained his memory not to go there. "Remember when we broke into the Initiative and pretended to be scientists?"

The slayer's eyebrow quirked. "And you decided the way to look nonchalant when the soldiers walked by was to make out. Yes, I remember that."

The two of them laughed, and Xander felt a little better at the ugh look on his son's face. Until Jess asked, "But you two never went out?"

Buffy shook her head. "Xander's like a big brother to me. So I guess you're like a nephew?"

Xander watched his son's face fall completely and felt better again.

"Are you going to be at the Bronze tonight?" Jess asked, and Xander sighed. Apparently it wasn't going to be that easy.

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Next time on Among the Living: Buffy and Spike spend some quality time together and a someone familiar checks in. Thanks again for reading and reviewing!