Chapter Fourteen

“I’m not doing magic!” Willow rushed out, then colored at both her obvious lie and her equally naked attempt at placating Giles. “I mean, yeah, I’m doing magic, but it’s good magic! Good, non-selfish magic.”

“Would Buffy and Kennedy think it’s good, non-selfish magic?” Giles challenged. Willow cringed; he’d heard the whole thing, apparently.

“I just want them to be safe,” Willow argued. “Tomorrow things will calm down, and everything will be fine.” Willow had the feeling she was being somewhat optimistic, but she squashed the thought ruthlessly.

“I think you may be severely overestimating the value of a night’s sleep,” Giles said dryly.

“It’s for the best,” she insisted.

Giles’s eyes sparked. “Your judgment in that area hasn’t always been stellar.”

Willow bowed her head, frustrated. What could she say? No matter what she did, no matter how tightly she reigned in her magical impulses, trying to destroy the world was something people didn’t just forget. What could she say—hey, I’m not nearly as homicidal as I was a year ago! She’d tried to kill them, all of them. She hated thinking about it, hated being reminded of it, but she didn’t deserve not to have it thrown in her face. If she thought that, she wasn’t sorry enough.

But still, she had to try. “You … you encouraged me to do more magic, not to let myself be crippled by what happened after … after….”

“That was about controlling the power within you,” corrected Giles. “This is about manipulating people.”

“This is about protecting people!” Willow countered.

Giles eyed her keenly. “Two minutes ago you undid your spell to hide my books, and already you’re up here casting a new spell. And if you really thought it harmless,” he added as she opened her mouth to interrupt, “I wonder that you’re doing it hidden away up here, with the door shut, without the consent of those affected. I can’t help but think that’s the kind of thing you would have done when you first began misusing magic.”

“This is different!” It was, wasn’t it? thought Willow desperately. It had to be.

Giles smiled slightly, a joyless expression. “It always is, isn’t it?”

Willow was silent as Giles left the room.

She couldn’t think of anything to say.

~*~*~*~

Dawn liked Cordelia—and why not? Cordelia had always been nice to her. And sometimes she’d been pretty mean to Buffy, and Dawn had kind of appreciated it. Which was, admittedly, petty, but she’d grown out of it. Right?

But that didn’t mean she wanted to hear twenty minutes straight about how talking to Cordelia was the high point of Andrew’s existence. “That’s great,” Dawn said, interrupting Andrew mid-stream. It was still about Cordy, but she’d stopped listening to specifics a few minutes ago. She had more important things to worry about. “Did you notice anything?”

Andrew pondered that for a minute. “I think she sounded taller,” he offered.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “I mean, about Xander when he came downstairs—he seemed scared.”

“Well I’d be scared, too, if Cordelia was as mad at me as she sounded at him,” Andrew reassured her.

“No,” said Dawn, although she winced at the memory of Cordelia’s wrath. “Really scared, even before he got the call. Remember how he came down the stairs? He’s frightened of something—something big.”

“Well, there is the whole Spike-in-jeopardy scenario,” suggested Andrew. “That kind of scares me.”

Dawn shook her head. “He’s been dealing with that kind of thing for years. This has to be bigger.”

“Killing Spike is big,” pointed out Andrew.

“Well yeah, but not to Xander so much.”

Andrew was silent for a minute, working through it all. “They didn’t tell us that much, though,” he said finally. He hated being out of the loop. That had been the best thing about the Trio—he’d been in on everything. He’d been Number One, Riker to Warren’s Picard. Now, sometimes, he felt like … Barclay. He hated being Barclay. He’d been Barclay his entire life.

“Maybe there’s something else they’re not telling us,” said Dawn quietly.

“Or maybe there’s something they don’t know,” suggested Andrew.

Dawn’s eyebrows swooped down. Not know? The others not know? Buffy and Giles and all of them not know? That couldn’t be good. “We have to take care of it,” she said authoritatively.

Andrew cringed. He wasn’t really very action-y, he was really more commentator-ish. “I think we should leave it to the others,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”

“You just said maybe they don’t know,” pointed out Dawn.

“Well okay, but you … you confused me!” accused Andrew.

Dawn shook her head. “Andrew, we have to handle it. We, us. We don’t have a choice, we’re red shirts!”

Andrew’s jaw dropped. “That’s not true—we are not red shirts!” he protested. “We’re valuable and high-ranking crewmembers whose loss would deal a fatal blow to the show—I mean, the Scoobies,” he added hurriedly, ignoring his Barclayish feeling from the moment before. “Like Tasha times ten!”

That was true, right? He was important, to all of them. They all knew his name, and loved him, and relied on him; he couldn’t be a red shirt, he wasn’t just there, on the outside, he was—

Thud.

Andrew’s train of thought derailed when Xander walked right into him. “Sorry, pal, I didn’t see you there,” Xander said over his shoulder, not slowing down, or using Andrew’s name, or even really looking at him.

Andrew gasped. “Oh my god, I am a red shirt,” he whispered.

Dawn gave him a good hard stare. “Then don’t you think it’s time to do something about it?”

Andrew hesitated—so long she thought he’d forgotten what they were discussing. Then his sheepish gaze hardened, and he nodded. “All for one?” he asked, holding out his hand.

Dawn covered it with her own. “And one for all.”

~*~*~*~

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Buffy coldly.

“I’m working out,” Kennedy snapped, jerking her arm back and freeing herself from Buffy’s grasp.

“You know what I mean.”

“What? I’m not like the others, I don’t spend so much time worshipping the great god Buffy that I know what you’re thinking all the time, so you might actually have to use words to tell me what you mean,” said Kennedy in annoyance.

Buffy lost her patience. She’d never had much with Kennedy anyway, and it had all been used up. Her mouthiness, her constant pushing, her leading the others in throwing Buffy out of her own house—this was it! “Stay away from Spike,” Buffy gritted.

Kennedy raised her eyebrows. “Sorry to break it to you, but he’s not enough to turn me.”

Something inside Buffy snapped and she lunged forward, grabbing Kennedy by the shoulders and shoving her against the wall. “Stay. Away. From. Spike.”

Kennedy tried to shake her off, but Buffy held her in an unforgiving grasp. “Let go,” demanded Kennedy, squirming.

“I’ll let go when I’m good and ready. Did you hear me?” Buffy added, giving Kennedy a shake for emphasis.

“You’re a psycho!” gasped Kennedy, panic beginning to enter her eyes.

“I know what you did—I know you were digging around about thaumogenesis behind our backs. And you know what, Kennedy? I think it’s time you headed out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s time to pack your bags and clear out,” Buffy spat. “Go back to your family, go to the Watchers’ compound in England, set up camp on the ruins of Sunnydale—I don’t really give a damn. Just get out.”

“What? Like this town isn’t big enough for the both of us?” Kennedy said in disbelief.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“It’s a free country—I can live where I want,” Kennedy protested.

“Think so?” Buffy mocked, her face right in Kennedy’s. “Think again, little girl. I have had it with you. Do you know why Willow thinks I’m here?” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “She thinks I’m going to kill you.”

Kennedy stilled.

“But I’m not. I’m here to warn you: I’m sick of games, and I’m sick of playing around. You get out of town, now, or I promise you … there’ll be hell to pay.”

~*~*~*~

Willow tapped her finger against her laptop impatiently. When she was squirrelly, she took comfort in being online. It soothed her, for some reason—maybe because computers were the first thing she excelled at, the first thing she won praise for. The first way she was able to help the gang.

And now, with the others scattered—angry, despondent—Willow didn’t feel nervous at all. Not a bit. Just because they were all demon-ridden, and Giles was in his study with the door locked and steam coming out of his ears, and Xander said he’d go crazy if he stayed there a moment longer, and Dawn and Andrew had “very important shopping to do,” according to Andrew, and Spike was god knew where drinking, and Buffy and Kennedy were probably at each other’s throats, nope, she wasn’t at all anxious.

“Will?”

Willow screeched and jumped up from the kitchen table, knocking the computer screen and hastily grabbing the laptop to prevent further damage.

“Is everything okay?” asked Buffy, frowning.

“Fine!” gasped Willow. “How’d it go?”

Buffy shrugged. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done—she’d practically threatened Kennedy (Practically? her conscience taunted her. What part of “Get out of town or there’ll be hell to pay” isn’t a threat?), which made her feel guilty. She didn’t own the town, and god knew she hadn’t liked it when Angel ordered her out of L.A. a few years back. Even if it hadn’t been about Faith, even if it hadn’t been Angel, she wouldn’t have liked it.

And for all she knew, Kennedy wasn’t even the demon. It could have leapt out of her body and into someone else’s, or maybe it was never in her at all. Maybe it was just floating around, gunning for Spike.

But what the hell did Kennedy hope to accomplish, hanging around a bunch of people who didn’t like her? Inflicting herself on them, just because she could? Even if she wasn’t the demon, what was the point? To hold onto a relationship that was dead? Buffy’d had enough experience with that to know it didn’t work, and would just make everyone involved miserable.

Maybe she should have said some of those things to Kennedy, instead of just, Get out of town, now!

But all she had to do to tamp down her squishy feelings of regret was think of the thaumogenesis demon, two years before, beating the life out of her. She was the Slayer, and she’d barely been able to defeat it. Spike didn’t have a chance—so she wouldn’t take a chance. “Where is everybody?”

Willow squirmed. “Well, Giles is in his study, and everybody else is out.”

“Out—what, to dinner? Why didn’t they wait?”

“Umm … they kind of went out separately. Spike said something about getting a drink,” Willow said vaguely.

“A drink? Why would he want a drink, after getting plastered last night and being hungover all day? That doesn’t make sense,” Buffy protested.

Okay, this was the part Willow hadn’t been looking forward to. “He was kind of upset,” she admitted.

Buffy frowned. “Upset? Why?”

Willow drew a deep breath. “Because-he-found-out-the-thaumogenesis-demon-might-want-to-kill-him,” she rushed out.

Buffy scowled. Of course! Of course, what else could it have been, except exactly what she didn’t want him to know? “How’d he find out?”

“He was listening at the door when we were arguing, before you left.” Willow cringed a little. Buffy was getting redder and redder, like her head might explode.

“Dammit!”

“He was kind of calm about it at first,” Willow assured her hastily. “But then the others came in and there was kind of a scene and some shouting, and he became kind of upset.”

Buffy went still. “So let me get this straight … everybody knows? So if the demon was in any of us, it knows about killing Spike?”

Willow nodded miserably.

Without another word Buffy turned and headed back the way she’d come.

“Where are you going?” Willow asked worriedly.

“To make sure he’s okay,” said Buffy swiftly. She didn’t question her ferocity; it was enough that she felt it. Understanding would come later.

It had been years since she’d felt so driven to protect someone besides Dawn. But he could be anywhere.

He could be in danger, and not even know it.

~*~*~*~

He wasn’t at the Plasma, the club Buffy had taken him to the night before. Unfortunately, that represented the sum total of the bars in town that Spike knew.

He has a sixth sense about bars, Buffy thought crankily. A bar sense. The ability to pick out even the smallest, most hidden watering hole and make himself at home. Maybe he’d even found a demon bar Buffy wasn’t aware of, thinking it would be like old times.

Only now he wasn’t a demon; he was prey. Not just to the thaumogenesis demon, but to the lowliest fledgling. And no matter how weak or untried, they were still stronger than him.

Oh, god.

Buffy began to run.

~*~*~*~

She never imagined Santa Rita had so many nooks and crannies, or so many bars. And she never imagined she’d be walking around for so many hours, still looking for Spike.

The sounds of retching coming from a nearby alley drew Buffy’s attention for a moment. Lovely, just—“Spike!” gasped Buffy, starting towards him.

Spike wiped the bile from his mouth as his stomach finally stopped heaving.

“Spike, what are you doing?” she scolded, helping him clamber to his feet.

“What are you, my mother?” he returned sullenly, jerking away from her and swaying on his feet. “Next I suppose you’ll want a shag.”

Buffy blinked. His train of thought eluded her, but it probably made some kind of sense to his whiskey-soaked brain. “Not right now,” she said dryly, steering him out of the alley.

He slipped his arm around her, fondling the sharp thrust of her hipbone. Apparently the word shag was enough to change his mood entirely. “We’ve had some good times in alleys, haven’t we?” he slurred, bumping up against her and letting her know that he might be drunk, but wasn’t incapable. “Met in an alley. Told you I’d kill you, remember? And that time outside the Bronze?”

“That was outside the Bronze,” she reminded him.

“Not that time! The time we’d just dusted a couple of vamps and you were mad ‘cause I copped a feel in front of that girl we saved. You said—you said—”

“I don’t—”

“Said it just proved I couldn’t love, because if I did I’d stop making things harder for you. Said you were miserable and I was making things worse.”

Buffy flushed. She knew, now, that his love for her had been real. It had sent him to Africa—his love and his guilt. She’d been so sure no one could love without a soul, but she’d been an idiot. A smug, prejudiced idiot, holding onto a panacea for pains long past.

“Spike—”

“But that didn’t stop you from unbuttoning my jeans, now did it? Just made it easier for you to leave me afterwards. Easier to step over me and go back to your friends and your lily-white life.”

“I’m not leaving you now, Spike,” she pointed out softly. She had much to regret, but she couldn’t think about it, not now, maybe not ever. If she thought about it, she’d never get out of bed in the morning. Bad decisions, stupid actions, cruel words.

“Sure, you’re not leaving me. Got a soul now, don’t I?” Soul, fucking double-edged sword. Punished him from the moment he got it. Made sure he wouldn’t hurt her again. Made it possible for her to love him, maybe. Someday.

Made him realize, more than anything, how hopeless his love for her had been. He could have loved her until the sky fell, and she would never have loved him back. He had thrown his love away on her, and it hurt, it hurt.

He mumbled something she didn’t catch, and she leaned closer. “What?”

“‘Desire of the moth for the star,’” he said muzzily.

“What? What star?” asked Buffy, glancing up. “What moth?” He was drunker than she’d thought, apparently.

“‘The devotion to something afar,’” he continued.

“Devotion to a star?” Buffy clarified, humoring him.

“To something hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless.”

Well, that didn’t sound good. “Nothing’s hopeless,” she said briskly, continuing to guide him home.

“Everything’s hopeless,” he corrected her, his voice sounding clear for a moment. “Everything.”