Chapter 6

The house was plunged into sudden darkness as the electricity failed all along the block. Streetlights sputtered out and bright residences were engulfed in shadow. The only light that remained was that which came from the spell on the Summers’ front lawn.

The Scoobies watched in amazed horror as a green glowing aura engulfed the circle, emanating from Dawn. The flames of the candles surrounding them erupted into mini infernos, sparks flying, each flame magnified in size as the Key’s energy entered the spell. An agonized, inhuman scream came from Spike as he slumped over next to Dawn. She stared at him, terrified, but bravely maintained her grip on his hand and the charm, using him as a conduit to power the slayer.

Buffy felt the surge of energy and burst out of her vampire double’s grasp. She was stronger now, she knew it.

She was powerful.

She could win.

Buffy leapt to her feet and began fighting furiously, throwing punches and kicks too fast for any of her friends to even see. Vamp Buffy snarled and charged at her, but she dodged the attack with ease. Without missing a beat, Buffy pulled out a stake and waited for an opening, knocking back her double’s punches as she went on the defensive. Vamp Buffy forced her back across the lawn with a series of blows, finally managing to land a kick that dropped Buffy to the ground.

Buffy locked her legs around Vamp Buffy’s and with a twist of her hips, they were both on the grass. Like an animal, Vamp Buffy lunged, knocking the stake out of Buffy’s hand, her fangs scraping along Buffy’s jaw as Buffy threw her aside.

Buffy kipped back up and reached for the extra stake she had tucked in her waistband at the small of her back, and Vamp Buffy took the opportunity to grab her from behind. She tried again to sink her teeth into Buffy’s neck, but Buffy thrust backwards, smashing the vampire into a tree.

While Vamp Buffy was still recovering from the impact, Buffy squirmed and broke free of her grasp. Spinning around with lightning speed, her arm shot out and the stake slammed into the vampire’s chest. Buffy watched her likeness crumble to dust and heaved a deep sigh.

She only relished her victory for a moment, though, before turning back to her friends, who’d come tumbling out of the house as soon as the fight was over. Angel, too, had picked himself off the ground and was hobbling toward the group.

“Dawn!” she cried. As her eyes adjusted to the night, now lit only by the moon, she caught sight of her sister huddled in the circle next to an unmoving Spike. The green glow of the spell had faded and all the candles had blown out.

“Oh, Dawnie, what did you do?” She broke through the throng of Scoobies and clutched Dawn to her. “You could’ve been hurt – or worse.”

“You needed me.” Dawn was shaky and crying a little bit, but otherwise okay. When she pulled away, she looked concerned. “Buffy? I think I killed Spike.”

Buffy glanced down worriedly. His face was white – even more so than usual – and the blood stood out in horrid contrast. She started to check for a pulse but stopped herself when she realized the senselessness of it. “He’ll be okay,” she assured Dawn, although she wasn’t completely certain. He wasn’t dust, though, so surely he’d recover, right?

“Come on.” Buffy helped Dawn to her feet, repeating to herself over and over not dust not dust. “Let’s go inside, okay?”

*****

Angel was waiting in the living room when Buffy came downstairs. “How’s Spike?” he asked, more for Buffy’s sake than out of any real desire to know the answer.

“Still hasn’t woken up.”

After the big battle with her vampire self, Buffy had brought Spike back in the house to recuperate. He’d been sleeping in her mother’s room for three days, and hadn’t stirred since he collapsed in the circle. Buffy was starting to worry that they really had killed him.

She rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I feel like it’s my fault. If I’d let Dawn do the spell from the beginning, Spike never would have been hurt.”

“You didn’t know what would happen,” Angel said, having recovered almost fully from his own injuries. “You were trying to protect Dawn.”

“And I’d probably have beaten vampire me a lot easier.” She looked up at him. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. That you couldn’t get your Buffy back.”

Angel shook his head. “We knew it was a long shot anyway. I mean, if there were really any way to un-vampire someone, do you really think I’d still be here?” Buffy smiled sadly. “You did what you had to do,” he said.

“What happened to her?” Buffy asked, not sure she really wanted to know. “I mean, Spike, I know, but how?”

“He came back to Sunnydale. We hadn’t seen him in two years – not since that time he kidnapped Willow and Xander. Did – did that happen here?”

She nodded. “He broke up with Dru and wanted a love spell?”

“Yeah. So he comes back, and he just – he had an invite to the house. I guess nobody thought to revoke it, it’d been so long…”

“What did he do?”

“He took your mother.”

Buffy had to fight to keep her knees from giving out and sending her tumbling to the ground. Her mother was alive. In Angel’s dimension, her mother was –

“He held her hostage, and then you – she – Buffy came home, and he offered a trade. He didn’t want to kill Joyce, he said. He wanted the slayer. So she fought him, right there in her living room” – they both glanced around the room as if they could picture it happening right then – “and he beat her. He won.” Angel choked up, and Buffy thought he was going to cry, but he composed himself. She should have known better. Angel would never let someone see him cry, not even her.

“But why turn her? Why not just kill her?”

“Because he was in love with her. He had this sick fantasy that he’d turn her and she’d be a replacement for Dru.”

Buffy swallowed hard. “Did that work? I mean, was she -”

“I don’t know,” Angel said. After a moment, he admitted, “I didn’t really want to know. We grabbed her as soon as we could, and we tried to, you know, we tried the spell.”

Buffy was silent for a while. When she finally spoke, she said, “I can’t imagine going back to your world, the Hellmouth with no slayer.”

Angel caught her gaze and studied her carefully. “You could come with me.”

Buffy’s heart wrenched. She thought about it for a moment, really considered it. A world where she and Angel were still together, where her mother was still alive, where there was no Glory. It was almost like having the chance to go back in time and erase the past awful year.

Angel’s eyes pleaded with her, his last hope of being with the woman he loved. He reached out and pulled her closer, one strong hand on the back of her neck, tipping her head up to look at him. Those dark eyes that pooled with emotion, the comforting, familiar curves of his features, beckoning her to a different life, the life she’d wished for so many times.

She was tempted.

But she wasn’t that girl anymore. Even the promise of an Angel who loved her and would never leave her – who would traverse time and space to save her – couldn’t recapture the feelings she’d slowly let slip away when this dimension’s counterpart had left to go to Los Angeles.

Especially when she’d never be able to replace the feelings that had begun to develop in the past few days, for the heroic, self-sacrificing vampire still sleeping in her mother’s bed. She couldn’t throw away the trust they’d built, so new, so fragile, and yet so deep, reinforced by a spell that had required complete trust in one another, and created an emotional bond that had not severed with the spell’s ending. She’d be giving that up for a world whose Spike had already killed her once.

And most importantly, it would be a world with no Dawn. Now, more than ever, she felt connected to her sister, couldn’t give her up for anything in the world. She couldn’t trade her, not even for their mother. A tear slipped from her brimming eyelid and made a trail down her cheek. “I can’t. I belong here. I’m sorry.”

Angel nodded, releasing her from his embrace. “Yeah, okay.” He gave her an ironic half-smile. “Guess if we need a slayer, we could always bust Faith out of prison.”

Buffy was skeptical, but she returned the smile, blinking back the rest of her tears, grateful to him for easing the tension. “Good luck with that.” She paused awkwardly, unsure of what else to say. “So, Giles and Willow have your thing all worked out? They know how to get you home?”

“I think so. As good as it’s gonna get. You wanna come down to the magic shop, watch them pull the lever, so to speak?”

Buffy looked up the stairs wistfully. “I should stay with Spike. Just in case he wakes up.”

“Yeah,” he said again. “Okay.” Just like her Angel, she thought. A man of few words.

“It was nice – seeing you,” she told him. “Angel and I haven’t really – It was nice.”

“Good luck.” He kissed her gently on the lips before heading toward the door.

“You, too,” she called after him.