Buffy was staring into space when Dawn woke up the next morning.

“Buffy?” Dawn asked. She hadn’t seen her sister like this since the first month, the day after the Hellmouth had collapsed. Buffy had seemed fine at first, getting everyone to L.A. and getting medical care for those who were hurt. They’d returned to their hotel rooms to find Buffy staring listlessly at the wall, completely zoned out. She’d sporadically come out of it, moving to use the restroom and occasionally to feed herself, but she’d been fairly unresponsive at any other time. Then Anne had gotten really sick one day, which had snapped Buffy out of her post-Hellmouth funk. And since she hadn’t shown any signs of going back since then, this scared the hell out of Dawn. “Buffy?” She touched her sister’s shoulder, jumping back as Buffy jerked back to awareness.

“What time is it?” Her voice was raw and scratchy.

“10,” Dawn answered with a frown. “What happened?” Buffy stared blankly at her sister, her brain not quite working. William chose that moment to noisily wake up and announce his hunger. Buffy shook her head, retrieving her squirming baby and carrying him into the kitchen.

“I had a dream,” she told Dawn, getting some applesauce out of the fridge. Will, like Anne, had some weird development going on. He could already stomach some ‘adult’ food and lift his head on his own. If he was anything like his sister, he’d be crawling before they knew it. Before she knew it. Buffy flinched involuntarily.

“OK,” Dawn said around a mouthful of cereal. As with most things Spike-related, she was approaching this with caution.

“I…I saw Spike.” Dawn could hear the tears in Buffy’s voice. “He was in this office, some sort of business place. He was there, and I was trying to catch him, but when I did…he just floated away. But he was THERE.” Buffy broke down then, tired of being strong; she missed Spike, and wanted him back. These dreams were just rubbing salt in the wound. Dawn pulled Buffy into a hug, trying to bring her exhausted sister some semblance of comfort. There was nothing she could say that would ease her sister’s burden, and it broke her heart. “I miss him.”

“I do too.” They sat there, both silently remembering the man who’d touched their lives so profoundly.

“Mamma?” Buffy quickly dried her eyes, turning to her daughter.

“Hi, beautiful. Sleep well?” Buffy asked her daughter, swinging her around. Anne giggled, winding her hands around her mother’s neck.

“Mamma’s sad,” the little girl said with a small frown, touching Buffy’s still damp cheeks. A blinding grin, so like her father’s, lit up her face. “But not for long!”

***

Spike felt a strange lethargy steal over him, watched curiously as Angel’s office disappeared. He felt tired, drained, which he figured was odd for a ghost. The world was grey, faded and mute. A sinister voice whispered in his ear, telling him to sleep, to stop struggling. And he was so tempted to do so. Everything seemed so hopeless; he couldn’t contact Buffy, couldn’t see his children…what was the point of existing anymore? If Angel was telling him the truth, then Buffy was doing just fine without him. Something in Spike rebelled at that idea, almost shaking him out of his complacency. NO. She was his, his mate, just as he was hers. They belonged to each other, weren’t whole without the other.

“Daddy,” a voice whispered though the mist. Spike felt a jolt of energy flash through him. “Daddy!” Spike started struggling against the mist, against the sinister thoughts that were trying to drag him away from the world he knew. “Come back. We need you!”

Fred gasped as Spike suddenly appeared in her lab, doubled over and looking tired.

“Spike?” the young Texan asked with concern. “Where’d you come from?”

“Don’t…know,” he gasped, shuddering. It felt like he’d been locked in a freezer for hours, his muscles almost frozen and cold.

“You disappeared almost an hour ago,” Fred said, concerned. She pulled out her spectral meter and started taking readings off the vampire-ghost. She frowned; his energy readings were fluctuating. If she wasn’t reading this wrong, he was actually regaining some interrupted equilibrium. “This isn’t right. What happened?”

“I…I’m not sure. There was this mist, and then…I felt so bad. Drained. And then…” Spike trailed off as the words stuck in his throat. He’d heard Anne’s voice. He was sure it had been her. Tell him they needed him. Buffy needed him. He had to get back!

“And then what?” Spike dragged himself back to the scientist.

“I heard…my daughter. And I fought back.” Spike turned away so she couldn’t see him, see how much this was affecting him. He had a reputation to maintain.

Fred frowned, once again finding herself second guessing Angel’s commands. Spike wasn’t acting like a psychotically deranged vampire bent on killing Angel’s former love. It all seemed quite suspiciously like jealousy to her.

“Anything else?” she asked, the scientist in her still trying to find the answer to Spike’s dilemma. Since he wasn’t a real ghost, there was a good chance she could solidify him given enough data.

Spike eyed the woman in front of him, judging whether or not to let her in. While she seemed nice and helpfully, less willing to condemn him for past crimes than the others, she was still one of the brooding wonder’s entourage. But he needed a friend; he needed someone he could talk to, who might help him, and he figured he wasn’t going to get much closer than Fred. So he did what he did best—he gambled.

“Last night, after you lot spilt…I smelled Buffy.”

“Smelled…Buffy?” Fred asked, her nose wrinkling.

“She hasn’t been here recently, yeah?”

“N-no. I don’t think she’s ever been here.”

“Right. So there’s no reason her scent should ‘ave been in that hallway. But it was, faint, but it was there. She needs me. They need me. You’ve gotta…help me. Please.” Fred watched wide eyed as Spike’s eye welled with tears, anguish written on his face. That depth of emotion couldn’t be faked, not even by the most consummate actor.

“Alright,” she said softly. “But first, no complaining about being a lab rat! And I’ll need you around to run experiments—no complaining! So first I need to get some readings…”