I was pissed off. Really, really. I’d hung at the magic shop for a while this morning with Giles and the Scoobies. Things had been okay, not good but okay. At the moment ‘okay’ is all I can hope for. Some customers came into the shop talking loudly. We weren’t really listening and then one of them said the ‘d’ word.

Dead.

There was an awkward silence by the counter. Tara looked down. Giles started vigorously sorting the cash register, beating Anya to it. Willow kind of slumped to the floor and sat there for a while, pretending to read a magick book. Xander avoided looking at anyone and Anya said something about helping the customers. I know she was upset because she never usually talks about ‘helping’ people.

Is it always going to be like this? Like, whenever anyone says ‘dead’, we’ll all think of her and be sad. Or just the little things, when someone says ‘my bad’ just like she did or we slay a vampire?

What I really hate is the pretending. No one else knows that Buffy is gone. We buried her out in the woods. It’s peaceful there and kind of pretty. There’s a gravestone and everything. I think she’d have liked it…

God, of course she wouldn’t have *liked* it. Being put in the ground. Where the bugs can crawl over her and eventually she’ll decompose and all that’ll be left is soil. Soil made of blood and bones and hair and nails. Nothing to say that Buffy was here, that she lived and she made a difference. Nothing except a cold lump of stone with words carved on it. And what do words matter now? What use are they?

After Mom died I read about it, looked it up on the ‘net. They charge you all that money for a goddamn coffin and, you’d think it would last. Instead it eventually falls apart. A hundred years or so and nobody will know who Buffy Anne Summers was.

Willow was talking about wiring up the robot again. Fixing its head back on somehow. She thinks that people are going to notice that Buffy is gone.

It’s not like they even gave a damn when she was here. I know that sounds awful but its true. As long as somehow the evil is gotten rid of they’ll never even know.

I used to complain about Buffy being the Slayer. That she got special treatment from Mom and stuff. Now that she’s gone I don’t think of it like that.

She didn’t have to do it. The fighting, the slaying, saving the world. I mean, yeah it was her sacred duty, she was chosen and all but the fact is that she fought the fight. She went out there and she helped people. Not just because she had to.

Without her Sunnydale would be long gone. And nobody even knows who she was. What she did. That now she’s gone too.

After spending most of the day at the magic shop I headed back home, it was dark and there might have been vampires but I was mad and honestly couldn’t care.

Everyone was busy there and I just slipped out. I couldn’t handle another round of being walked home and looked after and protected so maybe Buffy hadn’t died for nothing. That’s how I feel sometimes, like they only look after me and hang with me because of her. Because if anything happens to me then her sacrifice will have been a big fat waste.

I almost screamed when I ran into him. Like I said, I was pissed off, and upset and maybe kind of scared although God, I’d never admit that. Not to him or anyone else. He smirked a little and actually looked remotely amused that I was scared. For Gods sake he’s a defanged vampire with no other joys in life apart from watching *Passions* - what else can I expect? My gaze flickered down to the mostly empty whiskey bottle in his hand. He was drunk. I was disgusted, like that’s going to help. Or maybe it does, I’ve never tried it.

“ What are you doing out here, Nibblet?” Spike asked me. I don’t know if he cared or was curious or bored or just plain drunk.

“I’m walking, what the hell does it look like I’m doing?” I snapped at him. “And by the way I have a freaking name.” I had every right to yell at him. I was angry and he really wasn’t helping. I walked faster in the direction of my house, blinking back tears.

He caught up with me in a few easy strides and grabbed my shoulder turning me around to face him. “ Are you okay?”

I just looked up at him because no, of course I’m not okay.

He nodded briefly and I suppose he recognised the feeling. After that we walked for a while, my anger fading away as we did. Soon we came to the house and Spike’s favourite brooding spot. I grinned at the thought knowing how mad he’d be if I told him he was brooding.

“Does that help?” I asked, gesturing at the bottle. Spike laughed and offered it to me. I don’t think he actually expected me to drink it. I took it from him and downed what was left of it. It burned but not as much as other things. I gasped slightly because I’d never have expected it to taste like that, I thought it would be like beer or wine or something. Instead it was fiery and hot and I kind of liked it.

Spike stared at me and suddenly smiled. I blushed a little – he has that effect on me and I just couldn’t help it. He took the empty bottle back, and chucked it in some bushes. I opened my mouth to tell him not to and he just rose a ‘so what?’ eyebrow in my direction. I rolled my eyes. Stupid vampire.

We stood there for a while and it was too silent. It’s always too silent now. The vampires are actually pretty quiet now she’s gone. God, I would have wished this town full of vampires just to have her back.

“Dawn?”

Ohmygod. I was crying again, damn it. You’d think I could go for five measly minutes without bawling like a baby. I wasn’t really bawling though, just crying in that hopeless way when tears fall down your cheeks and you don’t know the point because what good can it do but you’re crying anyway.

I turned to face him and he looked concerned. Still a little drunk – I wonder how much it takes to get a vampire drunk – but concerned. “I’m okay” I managed to croak out. Lying my ass off.

Then all of a sudden he put his arms around me, letting me cry against his leather jacket. It was warm and comforting and I smelt the hot scent of the whiskey on him but that was comforting too. I let myself cry then, God did I cry. Then I pulled away embarrassed because this was Spike, and I should pull myself together and not act like such a kid.

He was just looking at me and stroking my hair a little like Buffy used to except it felt different because it was him. I felt dizzy and didn’t know if it was because of the alcohol or Spike or some crazy combination of the two. The tears dried on my cheeks. I looked up at him, and suddenly he kissed me.

His lips were soft at first as his tongue lightly danced against mine, his hands still entangled in my hair. I was just kissing him back, I couldn’t not. And God I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, because it all felt so good. An arm tightened around my waist and he was kissing me harder, his lips burning mine. Hot and fiery and good. Spike’s hand stroked up my back and then I remembered.

I remembered that this was Spike, and he was drunk and then that other thing that I didn’t want to think. But I forced myself to - the thing being that he loves my sister. He loves her. Why he was kissing me then and there I didn’t know. I knew that he loved her though and that was enough.

I pulled away from him quickly this time and didn’t manage not to gasp. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Maybe five at the most but it felt like forever. I was running then, running the short distance to my house and pulling hard at the door handle. That seemed to take forever too. I think I heard him yell my name as I ran. Dawn. Not Nibblet or Little Bit or any of his other nicknames but just Dawn.

continued