Many thanks to Immortal Beloved for being kind enough to beta this chapter!
















Until the day break, and the shadows flee away...
Song of Solomon 2:17













Chapter Forty-One




California
September 2001




Light was all around her—blazing white, hot, and cruel. Nothing else. Nothing at all for what seemed like a century…or just over a century. Then, the world appeared again in a blinding whirl of color and sound, and she was thrown, as if by some uncaring hand, onto a surface so hard that it knocked the breath from her body.

For a moment, she could only lie there, gasping. There was a thin stream of blood dribbling down her forehead, and her lungs burned as if her ribs were bearing down on them. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the rough, unforgiving plane that stretched beneath her. Buffy’s fingertips dug into it, and she slowly turned her head so that her cheek rested against its warmth and she could see it. And it was—

Tarmac.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing it not to be true. It was a dream…she’d had them before. Nightmares about being yanked away from the first bit of warmth and safety her life had known since she was fifteen years old. This was no different, she told herself. Just a nightmare. Soon, Livvy would be tapping on the door and waking her, helping her dress for breakfast. And William—

A small moan escaped her at the thought of him, and hot tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. Because she knew—she just knew—that this was not a dream. Not this time.

She had been pulled away from him. She had been brought back.

At first, the shock of it left her dazed, and she was deaf and dumb to anything except her own agony. But, eventually, her senses woke, and she began to hear sounds that, after such a long time away, seemed almost alien to her. London had seemed a bustling and noisy city at the time she had left it, full of horses and carriages, coal carts and ice wagons, men talking and women giggling, peddlers and beggars shouting from every street corner. Yet this place—this time—made all of that seem so diminished. Her ears filled with the roar of traffic on pavement, of horns screeching and radios blasting. She raised her head and immediately, her eyes were overwhelmed by color. Everywhere, there were lights—streetlights—headlights—the neon lights of shops and restaurants. They made her dizzy, and she could not bring herself to stand. But she forced herself into a sitting position and looked around in utter confusion. A building sat before her, squat, bright and ugly, in the late summer twilight. The front windows were huge and reflected the lights of the street, completely obscuring the people within. There was a sea of cars around her…a parking lot…and the sign that loomed over her on a steel pole read: Loony Tunes Music Shop.

Someone inside the store suddenly opened the door. A bell tinkled thinly and was quickly drowned out by the booming music that was playing within.

Buffy’s head throbbed to the beat of the song, and she pushed herself up from the pavement. Her legs were so wobbly she staggered to the side even before she had fully straightened her back, but she managed not to fall. Still disoriented, she braced her palm against the nearest car and tried to steady herself. The moment she touched it, however, the alarm went off with a computerized shriek, startling her so that she immediately leaped backward, feeling absolutely terrified.

“Hey!” a man shouted, running out of the shop’s open door. He drew up close to her and glared accusingly. “What are you doing to my Beemer?”

“Beemer…” she echoed slowly. His voice was raucous, grating, and his mouth seemed to move slower than the words that escaped from it. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“My car,” he said bitingly. “My brand-new, $130,000, BMW Z8 Roadster convertible. Were you touching it?”

“I—I wasn’t—”

She took a shaky step backward, and his eyes roved over her in an appraising and horribly suspicious way.

“What the hell do you think this is, anyway? Halloween?”

“Hallo…” Buffy’s voice trailed away as she looked down at herself. She was wearing a white dress trimmed with lilac and a matching hat; her riding whip was still dangling from her wrist, held there by a thin circlet of leather.

The man before her was clad in Calvin jeans and an expensive-looking jacket of brown leather. He was middle-aged and balding, clearly not impressed with her. He snorted.

“On drugs, huh? High? I’m not surprised. All I’ll say is you’d better get the hell away from my car, or else I’m going to call the police.”

Although she didn’t have the faintest clue what he was talking about, Buffy could read the intent in his angry dark eyes. She nodded stupidly, silently. There was a long stretch of highway beside her, and she turned toward it, stumbling away from the man with her hands extended before her like a blind woman’s. Behind her, she could hear the man swearing quietly as he inspected his vehicle.

His voice warped suddenly, wavered as if its owner were being choked by an unknown hand. And Buffy didn’t know if it was truly the man’s tone changing, or if she had gone insane from the shock and was hallucinating. She didn’t look back to see.

The glare of headlights appeared in the distance, throwing halos across her vision and disorienting her even more. She lurched to a halt, tripping over her long skirts, the stiff shaft of her whip tapping against her hip sharply. Something very large was bearing down on her, and the white lights preceding it became suddenly blinding. Like a deer, Buffy stood motionless and spellbound, staring directly into the grill of the truck. Unafraid.

Then, the driver saw her and punished her for her stupidity with his booming air horn. And the sound was so loud—so terribly unfamiliar—that it frightened her into motion. She lunged to one side, stumbling into the shallow ditch that flanked the road. There was a wooded area next to her—dense with trees but not very large—and she fled into it. And all the while, her head was pounding with a single thought:

Oh God…I don’t know where I am.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Spike pressed his index finger into the doorbell, once. Then, twice. Then, three times. And then he waited, bobbing impatiently on the balls of his feet, for someone to answer. Although his blue eyes were darting around him, seemingly interested in his surroundings, his thoughts were not on them. Mentally, he was preparing himself for whoever came to the door. If it were the Bit, he knew he’d get information. If it were the Scoobies, however, it would just be another pointless—and seemingly endless—argument, which would conclude, no doubt, with his being physically expelled from the property. And if it were Buffy—

A lump formed in his throat at that. Buffy. How long had it been since he had last seen her? He didn’t even have to consider it. He knew. She’d disappeared on April 30. He’d last seen her on the seventeenth. Hadn’t spoken to her, though. Had been weeks before that since he had spoken to her. But he’d seen her at the Bronze and in the cemetery, had been careful not to speak or to stalk…but he’d watched.

Today was September 5. It had been 128 days since she’d left, and 141 days since he had last seen her.

He sighed and fidgeted. He was about to press the bell again when the heavy wooden door opened just a crack and a pair of blue eyes peeped through it.

“Spike?” Dawn said it like a question, with the air of marked relief. She opened the door wider. “What are you doing here?”

He rolled his shoulders in an uneasy shrug. “In the neighborhood and all that. Thought I might as well drop in, see if you’d heard—”

She shook her head slowly, almost gently. Almost as if she knew how badly the answer hurt him. Something in her sympathy made him feel worse, and he cleared his throat loudly. “Well—”

Dawn’s gaze followed his own as it traveled over her shoulder. “They’re not here,” she said in answer to his unasked question. “They’ve gone out again, to the Magic Box. They never tell me anything…but I think they’re doing the chanty thing. You know. Trying to get her ba—”

“Why don’t they do it here?” Spike interrupted. “This is where she disappeared.”

“Willow says there’s more positive energy at the Magic Box…it’s supposed to make the whole thing easier.”

He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and muttered: “Positive energy, huh? We’ll have to tell that to the previous owners. I’m sure they’ll appreciate knowing it, being positively dead and all.”

“Well…I think she meant, like, magical energy. Not really…” She paused. Then: “I’d invite you in, but…”

“Yeah, I know. They knew I came here again, I’d end up a smear of charcoal at the end of a very stout skewer.”

“They’re still angry with you about the whole kidnapping her thing, I guess,” Dawn admitted. “But if you’d just let me explain…if you’d let me tell them what you did after Mom died. What you did for me and for Buffy. I mean…you risked your life for us…and for Mom. If I told them, maybe they’d stop being mad at you.”

He snickered. “Tell them that I helped you try to bring your mum back from the dead? Yeah, that’ll get me an invite to Thanksgiving dinner, all right.”

“You were just trying to help…”

“Well, they wouldn’t see it that way. And neither would Buffy. So, you just keep your mouth shut about it, all right?”

She looked sulky. “If you hadn’t been such an idiot, you wouldn’t be person non gravitas right now.”

“Well, it’s not like I meant for it to turn out that way!” he snapped with swiftly growing irritation. “And it’s persona non grata, for Christ’s sake. What are they teaching you in that school?”

“You know…math and stuff,” she answered vaguely, not at all deterred from their original subject. “How’d you expect it to turn out?” she demanded after a moment. “You can’t just chain someone up and tell them to love you. That’s like—beyond obsession.”

“Well, I know that now, don’t I?” He took a drag on his cigarette and then pulled it out of his mouth to shake ash from the tip. It sifted onto the welcome mat at his feet.

“Who told you the details of that, anyway?”

“Xander.”

“Mm. No surprise there. Bastard’s got no problem giving you all the nasty little particulars of that night and putting ideas into your head; but he won’t sit a night with you while the rest of them are putting on their mojo.”

Dawn looked uneasy, and Spike’s sharp eyes noticed it immediately.

“You been alone long?” he pressed.

“Not long, really. Just…frequently. Everyone’s really busy.”

He snorted. “I can imagine.”

“Spike…” The big blue eyes suddenly became plaintive, looking at him. “If I did invite you in, you wouldn’t say anything to them about it, right? You wouldn’t just come in anytime you wanted…to sniff my sister’s underwear, or whatever it was you were doing before. Would you?”

Spike tilted his head back, directed a line of smoke at the porch light. “I’d try to hold back,” he said dryly. “Why? You saying you want me to come in?”

“I don’t know. I mean…there’s never anyone here until, like, eleven o’clock. There’s nobody to talk to and nothing to do. And you never have anything to do, now that you aren’t able to go around ripping out people’s throats. I thought we could…you know…hang out.” She flashed him a winning smile then, and played her trump card: “We’ve got Totino’s pizza rolls.”

“Thanks for the crumbs from your table,” he replied. He tried to look nonchalant but came off incredibly self-conscious instead, as he added, “Yeah. Guess if I were to get an invite, I might see my way clear to accept.”

Stepping back slightly, Dawn pulled open the door as wide as it would go. Then, she said unceremoniously, “Come in, Spike.”

He followed her over the threshold, and just like that, the wall came down.

Just like that, he was inside the Summers’ home.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Later, she would have no idea how she arrived there. Nothing was familiar, not even those landmarks and places she had seen a million times before—not even the Bronze, the brightly-lit, key-shaped sign of which rose up out of the darkness like a warning flare. She veered away from it and walked blindly through the town, moving in ragged lines and loops. It was only by chance or instinct that she found herself on Revello Drive, and even then, she was confused, uncertain as to which of the houses actually belonged to her.

It was by chance, therefore, that she picked the right one.

Like a dead woman walking, she crossed the lawn. The train of her skirt was bedraggled and dirty; it caught on one of the hedges that flanked the steps. Buffy ignored it and kept walking until it gave way under the pressure, pulled out of the branches with a sharp, tearing sound. Once she was on the porch, she felt dizzy, a little queasy, as if the exertion had been too much for her. She gripped the wooden doorframe with both hands and willed herself not to faint.

“Dawn—” she called. But her voice was weak and strangled, hardly more than a whisper. No one answered the call—she forgot about the bell—so she grappled for the doorknob instead. It turned easily. Not surprising, since they rarely locked the door; but to Buffy, the sudden movement was startling. She was still leaning against its wooden surface, so when the door opened, she lost her balance and fell forward. Fell into the room.

Fell into absolute confusion.

Just a few dozen feet from her, in the living room, Spike was drowsing against one arm of the sofa, his feet propped comfortably on the edge of the coffee table. Buffy couldn’t see his face; his back was to her. But she could tell by the slant of his head that he was sleepy, his attention only vaguely focused on the flickering lights of the television. Beside him, Dawn was drawing a heart on the palm of her hand with a felt-tip pen. Her eyes were staring raptly at Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“This is really awesome,” she said, aside.

Spike stirred at the sound of her voice. “Huh? Oh, well. Don’t be telling the foster family I was letting you watch this, or they’ll think you’re corrupted.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Please. I saw The Spy Who Shagged Me last week with Janice and her mom, and that was so much worse.” Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Anyhow, you made me promise not to tell them you were here at all.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s—”

He stopped suddenly. Buffy had dropped to her knees onto the floor, giving in to the horrible, trembling weakness in her legs. She was certain that she had not made a sound, but something alerted Spike to her presence. His head whipped around, his shoulders twisting so that he could see the foyer full-on. When he did, he froze.

Frightened by his behavior, Dawn turned to look, too. Her eyes were anxious, as if in expectation of seeing a demon, or maybe an angry member of the Scooby gang. When they landed on Buffy, however, they changed to relief, and then to utter delight.

“Buffy!”

She vaulted over the back of the sofa, and Buffy thought she heard Spike call to her—“Dawn, wait!”—but his voice was hoarse and thick, so soft that she couldn’t be sure if he had actually spoken. She had looked down when he turned toward her, and she couldn’t bear to raise her eyes now. Even as Dawn threw her arms around her sister’s neck, Buffy’s eyes were trained on the hardwood floor.

Dawn was sobbing, clutching at her. “Buffy—Buffy—where’ve you been—?”

But Buffy hardly heard her. There was another sound that caught her attention: the soft creak of the sofa as Spike pushed himself up from it, the thump of his boots crossing the floor to where she and Dawn sat together, wrapped in a tangled embrace. She flinched at his approach. He stopped very close to them and then stood still. And she tried with everything in her not to look—she didn’t want to look. But beyond her own volition, her eyes rose, traveling up the slim, black-clad body until they finally rested on his face.

His face.

It was a face full of longing, the blue eyes lost and naked…so very familiar. But his hair was platinum and his cheeks gaunt…the line of one dark blond eyebrow was divided by a jagged scar. His head tilted and his full lips parted as if to speak—

But he didn’t.

Because at that moment, his eyes flicked downward, and they noted, for what she knew must be the first time, what she was wearing. Did he recognize the dress? Impossible to say. But a garnet bracelet adorned her right wrist. It was scuffed and dirty from the parking lot, half-hidden by the sleeve of her garment.

But still so very, very familiar. A link between them.

His eyes locked on it; and Buffy, still numb with shock, could see the exact moment when he put it all together.

Dawn saw it, too. The strange and suddenly greedy look on his face. It alarmed her, and she said softly, “Spike…are you okay?”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes still trained on the bracelet.

“I’m…”

He spoke quietly and very slowly. Before he could go any further, his words were cut off by the sudden thunder of footsteps. Buffy jumped as something crashed behind her—Xander had knocked over the coat rack—and then she was surrounded by people.

Although there were only five of them, they seemed like a hundred. All of them were talking at once, raising their voices to compete with everyone else’s and stepping on each other’s words. Five pairs of hands grappled at her—six, if she counted Dawn’s, although her sister’s were much gentler—and pulled her to her feet.

“Buffy, are you okay?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Where have you been?”

“Do you remember anything?”

“You weren’t wearing that before you cashed in your ticket on the magic bus to Hellville, were you?”

The last question, uttered by Anya, earned her a withering glance from Willow.

“Don’t talk to her like that! You don’t know where she’s been—she’s upset. Can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk about it? She’s in shock! Buffy, do you want to talk about it?”

The rapid-fire interrogation made Buffy’s head ache, and it only served to confuse her more. She dropped her face into Dawn’s shoulder and mumbled an indistinct response. Dimly, she could hear Xander’s voice climb to a tone of high-pitched sarcasm, and she realized that he must be talking to Spike, ordering him to leave.

Suddenly, there was another slam—this one so violent that the walls shivered and the pictures hanging on them crashed to the floor. And Buffy knew, without having to look, that Spike was gone.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~