Disclaimer: All the characters are Joss Whedon’s
Thanks to all the amazing BSV reviewers for inspiring me to keep working on this, despite a week of laptop hell!
 
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Spike remained unconscious as the Scoobies brought him into Buffy’s house. Willow apparently was enough of a resident now for her invitation to allow Spike in. “Take him to my room,” Buffy ordered. They all looked at each other in confusion, but did as she asked. They laid him out on the bed, with him looking every bit the corpse he was. Buffy winced at the sight of his beautiful face all blackened and scarred. She passed her hand through his cheek, desperately wishing she could comfort him.
 
She spun to face her friends, who were still completely bewildered at the turn of events. “I need my body back. What are you going to do about it?” she demanded.
 
Everyone looked at Willow. She cleared her throat and said, “We’re going to need some of the texts from the Magic Box. I need to look at what could have happened when we did the spell.”
 
“Fine,” Buffy said shortly. “Do that. Xander and Anya – you need to go get Spike some blood. He’s going to need it when he comes to.” They all hesitated, still unsure. “Well what are you waiting for?” yelled Buffy. “You made this mess! Now get busy cleaning it up!”
 
The others left to go about their errands. Buffy sat down next to the bed. “Spike. I don’t know if you can hear me. But I need you. Please come back to me. Don’t leave me here alone…” The vampire lay unmoving, heedless of her desperate plea. She sank her ghostly hand into his and did her best to stay calm while she waited for the others to return.
 
Xander and Anya returned first, and came up with a mug of blood for Spike. Anya managed to coax a small amount into him, but he was still mostly out of it. “Try again later,” Buffy said quietly.
 
“Buffy… “ Xander began uncertainly.
 
“What?” she snapped.
 
“We… we didn’t know this would happen. We just… we missed you.”
 
“I know, Xander,” said Buffy, attempting to stay calm. “But Spike was trying to help, and you treated him like garbage. You ignored him and put him down until you needed him, and then expected him to jump to attention.”
 
“But we didn’t know it was really you…” Xander tried to explain.
 
“You didn’t give him even half a chance to explain!” Buffy retorted. “I was there, Xander. He tried to tell you. Multiple times. And all you did was accuse him of being drunk, insane, or under the influence of the First. If he didn’t care about me, why the hell would he have stayed around here taking crap from you guys all summer?”
 
“I’m so sorry…”
 
“Really don’t want to hear it, Xander,” said Buffy, cutting him off. “Right now, we’ve got to help Spike and get me back to solid form so I can get my sister back.” She turned back to look at Spike, trying to see if the small amount of blood they managed to get into him was having any effect.
 
The awkward silence was broken by the sound of Willow and Tara returning. Tara came upstairs and said, “We think we know a way to do it. Can you come downstairs?”
 
“Be right there,” said Buffy. She turned, and best as she could, pressed her lips to Spike’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon,” she whispered. Then she drifted through the door and down the stairs.
 
Willow and Tara were busy casting a circle and lighting candles. Buffy was not altogether sure she wanted Willow doing magic on her again, after what had happened last time. But she needed her body back. She still longed for heaven. She probably always would. But she had work to do here. Spike and Dawn needed her, and she needed them. She somehow knew that heaven would not be the same if she turned her back on them now.
 
“Do I need to stand anywhere in particular?” Buffy asked.
 
“Just inside the circle is fine,” said Tara. She and Willow sat cross legged and joined hands. They began chanting, the sing-song rhythm filling the room again and again. Then after long minutes, Willow’s eyes went black and she said in a deep voice, “Solid.”
 
Buffy jerked as if electrocuted. A flood of sensation overwhelmed her senses. Sounds, light, heat – everything rushed back in an incredible wave. She fell to the floor and curled up in a ball trying to shut out the pain of all her nerve endings firing at once. She screamed as her body took form, lungs expanding, heart beating. This was nothing of the blissful gentle warmth she remembered. This was hard and cold and loud and it was excruciating.
 
The rush of power around Willow and Tara subsided as the spell concluded. Buffy’s wails of pain died down to gasps as she lay there shuddering. The others were stunned into silence for a long minute. Then Xander walked over and crouched down next to her tormented form. Tentatively he reached out to her shoulder saying, “Buffy? Are… are you…?”
 
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, flinching away from his touch. Xander flinched back as well, shocked by the violence of her reaction. She sat up, still in a defensive posture, looking pale and disheveled in her black burial dress. “It hurts…” She wrapped her arms around herself protectively.
 
“What hurts Buffy?” Tara asked gently, wanting to somehow soothe the distressed Slayer.
 
“Everything,” Buffy replied, gritting her teeth. “It’s all too loud, too much…“ They wanted to work this spell on me when I was in my coffin? My god, what if I had come to in there! She shuddered anew at the thought of waking up buried alive.
 
“It’s ok, Buffy,” said Willow. “You’re back.”
 
Buffy shot a look of pure rage at Willow, and the red-haired witch found herself frightened of what she saw. “You have no idea what you did to me, what you made me suffer.” Buffy slowly, unsteadily, hauled herself to her feet. “If you ever even think of putting a spell on me or anyone I care about again, I will kill you with my bare hands.” The cold tone of her voice left no doubt that she meant every word.
 
Gaining strength with every step, she pushed past them and made her way to the kitchen. She returned with a knife and started climbing the stairs without another word. The others looked around in alarm. “Buffy? What are you doing?” Xander asked. When they got no answer they raced up after her, worried that she was going to do something to hurt herself.
 
They found her sitting on the bed next to Spike, in the process of slashing her arm. “Buffy, No!” cried Willow. “He’s hurt, he’ll kill you!”
 
“Get back!” ordered Buffy. She held her bleeding arm up to Spike’s lips as she slid her other arm underneath him to hold him up. “Drink, Spike. You need this. Come on, Spike.” She searched his face anxiously for a sign of consciousness.
 
Spike’s demon woke up first. Slayer blood… He vamped out instinctively and locked on to her wrist, taking long deep pulls of the rich fluid. The Scoobies were horrified at the sight. “Get off her!” Xander cried, searching around frantically for some sort of weapon.
 
“What part of get back do you NOT understand?” Buffy growled. The sound of her voice penetrated Spike’s mind. Buffy? With a massive effort he wrestled to overcome his demon. Gasping, he released her arm, sealed the wound with his tongue, and fell back, his human visage slipping back into place around the scars and tortured flesh.
 
“Buffy?” he whispered. “You’re…”
 
“I’m me again, Spike,” she soothed. “Just relax.”
 
“So sorry, love,” he mumbled. “I tried…”
 
“Shh,” she said, gently slipping her arm out from underneath him. “You didn’t fail me.” She placed a soft kiss on his forehead and stood up, facing the Scoobies.
 
“You four, on the other hand, have failed me big time.” Her green eyes blazed with unconcealed anger.
 
“We never wanted to hurt you…” Willow began.
 
Buffy cut her off. “Save it. I want the four of you out of my house. Now. Leave your keys. I’ll let you know when you can come get the rest of your stuff.” The others stepped back a bit from her intense glare. “And I repeat – if you do ANY magic directed at me, Spike, or Dawn without our express knowledge and permission, you will regret the day you were born.”
 
Xander sputtered, “So the bloodsucker gets to stay, and we have to leave? He could drain you! I don’t think his chip is working on you!”
 
Buffy had her hands on Xander’s lapels and had him shoved against the wall before he could blink. “The ‘bloodsucker’ didn’t drain me just now, did he? The ‘bloodsucker’ loves me enough that he tried to send me back to heaven, rather than keeping me to himself. Could you have done that Xander? If I had come to you, could you have sent me back, knowing I would be gone for good?” She released him and looked around at the rest of them. “You guys patrol one night by yourselves and you’re exhausted. There were two of you in the house and you couldn’t keep track of Dawn and keep her from getting taken away. What would you have done if your spell had worked, Willow? What if I had woken up in my fucking coffin?” Willow blanched at that thought – they had not even considered that possibility at all. “What if I came back all feral like Angel had? Would you guys have helped? Or would it be all ‘Yay, Buffy’s back, have fun slaying, and oh yeah, the mortgage is due’?” The others looked at the ground. They really hadn’t thought it through, in retrospect. They just sort of assumed that Buffy would return, and everything would be the way it was.
 
“Someday, I may be willing to discuss this with you. But until you hear otherwise, get out of my house, and stay the hell away from me, Dawn, and Spike. Are we clear?” Buffy demanded.
 
The others nodded. Willow and Tara quietly took their keys out of their pockets and handed them to Buffy. Then they all filed down the stairs and out the door. Buffy followed them and locked the doors behind them.
 
Spike had listened to this entire exchange with amazement. He was certain that the pain was making him hallucinate. There was no way that Buffy just kicked the Scoobies out and threatened them on his behalf. That was completely inconceivable. He lay there with his eyes closed, feeling the powerful Slayer blood start to work on the worst of his injuries, and waited to wake up from what must be a dream.
 
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Buffy turned after locking the kitchen door and sank into a chair for a moment. She felt utterly drained. She knew some of it was from the blood loss. But the vast majority of her weariness was emotional. The immediate shock of coming back to life had faded for the most part, but the fear that had come with it had singed her nerves raw. Everything was still so loud. Even the ticking of the kitchen clock seemed painfully loud. The chair beneath her was painful to her over sensitized skin and muscles. Her brain was already swirling with problems that needed solving, all related to getting Dawn out of foster care and back home.
 
And then there was Spike. Spike who had done everything in his power to help her, and who was now lying in her bed, semiconscious and in as much pain as she was. She was going to have to figure out how she felt about him, at some point. Right now, she needed him better. She knew she was not going to be able to get Dawn back alone, and she needed some support.
 
Buffy rose and got more blood from the fridge. She heated up a mug of it and slowly climbed back upstairs. He reminded her of the Phantom of the Opera somehow – one side of his face still white and fair, the other side black, twisted, and scarred. What if that doesn’t heal? she worried. Are holy water burns permanent? She closed the drapes, then moved over to the open side of the bed and climbed up next to him.
 
He stirred and turned toward her, half opening his good eye. “Where am I?” he asked.
 
“You’re in my bedroom,” Buffy answered. She helped him sit up somewhat and held the mug of blood for him. He swallowed it greedily, then lay back down.
 
“What happened?” Spike wondered. He still couldn’t quite decide if this was reality or not, because Buffy seemed awfully human all of a sudden, and he was not sure when that happened.
 
“Xander was going to dust you,” she explained. “I stepped out of the circle and they were finally able to see and hear me. I made them bring you back here, and got Willow to make me solid again. Then I told them all to get the hell out.”
 
“Why?” Spike whispered. “You were on your way back to Heaven, I know it.”
 
“I couldn’t let them kill you,” Buffy explained. She took Spike’s hand in hers and stroked it with her thumb as she spoke. “In the end, I couldn’t leave Dawn, and I couldn’t let them kill you when all you had done was help. This… all this was their doing.”
 
“What?” Spike gasped.
 
“They tried to do some sort of resurrection spell on me. That’s how I got yanked out of Heaven,” Buffy explained, bitterly. Then she continued, more gently, “You risked everything for me, Spike. That means something. Not sure what yet, but I need you here to figure this out.”
 
“You took a risk, giving me your blood,” he admonished. “I could have drained you; I was so out of it.”
 
She gently stroked his hand again. “You did so much for me. It was the least I could do. I knew you wouldn’t drain me. I just knew.”
 
“What will you do now?” Spike asked, afraid to hear the answer. She had thrown all her friends out in a rage. He wasn’t sure where he stood, but he had never really had ‘friend’ status with her before, and felt on unfamiliar ground.
 
“Immediately? I’m going to rest. It… hurts. Being alive again. The spell…” She shuddered a bit at the memory. “It hurt, a lot,” she concluded. Then she added, “The rest, we’ll figure out. But I just want you to know – you can stay here, as long as you want. I could use your support.”
 
“I’ll stay as long as you need, pet,” Spike answered gently.
 
Buffy looked down at herself, realizing she was still in her burial dress. “I swear, I’m going to burn this thing. Be right back.” She rummaged through her dresser and came up with some sweats and a tank top. She disappeared into the bathroom to change. Looking at herself in the mirror, she hardly recognized the reflection. She was pale, not her usual California tanned self. Her eyes were too wide for her face somehow, and she looked thin and tired. Feel like I’ve been to hell and back, not the other way around.
 
Buffy came back to the room to find that Spike had dozed off again. She stretched out on the bed next to Spike and rolled on her side facing him. She hesitated a moment, then rested her hand on his chest. He woke up, momentarily startled. Then he covered her hand with his own and gave a deep sigh of contentment. Heaven, he thought. Who needs it? For a long while he almost completely forgot about the pain of his burned face and just basked in the warmth of his Slayer’s hand on his chest.
 
TBC