ItHurtsP7

It Hurts (So Bad) - 7

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Once back in the apartment Dawn felt the anger and tension draining out of her. She felt as if she were going to collapse. Instead she went into the kitchen to get a chair and carried it over to Buffy’s bed so that she could sit with her and help her if she needed any help at all. She glanced at her watch and realized for the first time that it was almost four in the morning. It had been a long night already and there were a lot of hours to go before morning.

Thinking about morning made Dawn think about what she was going to do next. There was no way she was going to leave Buffy, not alone. She knew she could take one day off from school, maybe even two, or three. Three would take her up to the weekend, that meant two more days, but on Monday she knew she would have to go back. Would Buffy’s slayer powers have healed her up by then? Would she be able to leave Willow alone with Buffy? Did she still trust Willow enough to leave her alone with Buffy?

Dawn didn’t know what was going to happen or how things were going to work out, but she knew that Buffy had called her for help and that was the most important thing in the world to her. Buffy needed her and she wasn’t going to let her down, not for any reason in the world.

As the hours slipped by Dawn kept watch over Buffy. She had hoped that Buffy would fall asleep and get some rest, but it didn’t work out that way. Buffy laid there in the bed, her eyes open and out of focus, looking off into a distant somewhere. Periodically she would raise the whiskey bottle she had her fingers wrapped around up to her lips and take a sip, then let her hand settle back to her side, but never letting go of the bottle.

Dawn watched Buffy’s eyes moving around at times as if she was following the movements of someone. At different times her lips would move as if she were talking to someone. It took a couple of hours before she finally figured it out, Buffy was talking to Spike. An hour later after leaning close and listening carefully she realized that Buffy was repeating her half of a conversation that she’d had with Spike a couple of years ago when Dawn had been with them. Dawn was amazed by what she saw happening. Buffy was so drunk that she probably couldn’t stand up on her own if her life depended on it. But, even though her words were slurred by the alcohol in her system, she was remembering whole conversations with Spike and speaking her parts of the conversation. With her level of intoxication Buffy should have been unconscious. When Dawn noticed at one point that Buffy was smiling a feeling of overwhelming sadness swept over her as she understood that Buffy was reliving a happy moment with Spike and that the memory of past moments with Spike were the only happy moments Buffy might ever have again.

Dawn was just on the verge of nodding off when she heard a light tap on the door. She checked her watch and it was just past eight. When she opened the door Willow was standing there holding two large coffee’s from Starbucks. The smell of the coffee was rich and creamy, with a hint of almond. Dawn knew immediately it was a Moca Almond Latte, her favorite coffee of the month. But instead of taking one of the coffees from Willow she stepped out into the hallway. She walked down the hallway to where Willow had started her written assignment. She read the first line she had dictated to Willow and saw that there were Twenty-four more lines written underneath it in a nice straight column. She could see that there was column after column written down the hallway wall. She started counting the columns and counted forty, one thousand total.

Dawn walked back to Willow who was still standing outside Buffy’s door watching her. Dawn could see that Willow had stopped crying some time ago, but her eyes were still red and puffy. She held out her hand and Willow handed her one of the coffee cups. Before taking a sip Dawn asked Willow a question, “Have you figured out what love is yet?”

Willow looked down at the cup she was holding as if she were afraid to meet Dawns eyes. “Yeah, I think so. More than I ever understood before anyway.” When Willow finally did look up at Dawns face she had tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry Dawnie.”

“It’s not me you should be sorry to” Dawn said quietly. She then opened the door to the apartment and let Willow enter ahead of her. Once in the room she lead Willow over to the bed and whispered quietly, “She hasn’t slept for a minute all night, not one. Watch her for a few minutes, watch what she’s doing. I’ll explain it later.”

The two of them stood there watching Buffy in her bed, taking an occasional drink from the whisky bottle and seeming to be mumbling to herself. For twenty minutes they watched and sipped their coffees, neither one saying anything to the other. Finally Dawn signaled to Willow and led her over to the small couch and sat down. Willow sat down next to her and looked at her, waiting for Dawn to explain.

Dawn let out a sigh and started speaking quietly, “She’s totally drunk, but she’s not getting any drunker. She’s drinking just enough to maintain a constant state but not get any drunker or passing out. You saw her eyes moving and heard her talking to herself?” Dawn looked to Willow for confirmation. Willow nodded her head yes in agreement.

“She’s hallucinating and hearing voices” Dawn said and sighed again. “She thinks she’s seeing Spike and she’s talking to him. But she’s not just babbling. I’ve caught what she’s saying several times, she’s replaying old conversations she had with Spike in the past. Do you understand?”

Willow looked at her confused, but interested “No, I don’t think I do.”

“She’s hearing Spike speak his half of a conversation and she’s speaking her half of it back to him. She’s reliving the past, and sometimes she smiles because she’s happy. She even blushed about an hour an a half ago, like Spike said something naughty to her but she liked it anyway. You know how she could get sometimes, a guy say’s she’s hot or sexy or just pretty and she’d get all flustered even if she liked it.”

Willow nodded her head in understanding and agreement. “Yeah, she use to do that all the time back in high school and when she first started getting interested in Riley. She was blushing all the time, well a lot of the time anyway, in the beginning.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. Sweet words from Spike are probably her best memories of him, but there probably weren’t all that many of them. At least not nice conversation type memories. Look, Buffy told me a lot those first few months after Spike died at the Hellmouth. She needed to talk and no one else wanted to listen to her talk about Spike. She told me that there was a lot of pain in their relationship, and almost all of it her fault. She knew Spike loved her and because she couldn’t admit to him she had feelings for him too she literally drove him crazy.”

“That’s why, I think, after he tried to rape her and ran away, she didn’t stay angry at him, she blamed herself for it happening. She’d go to him and have sex with him to make her feel that she was alive, then she’d beat him up for telling her he loved her. They did a lot of kinky sort’a stuff, mostly because Buffy wanted to punish herself for being with Spike. Anyway, there was a lot of pain and guilt in their relationship. What I’m really worried about is that when the happy nice smiley stuff runs out, is she going to start reliving the painful guilty part of their relationship over again too. Because there was a lot more of that than the happy nice stuff.”

Willows eyes had gotten big at the edited version of the Spike and Buffy relationship, Dawn wondered how she would have reacted to the unedited version. That was probably another reason why Buffy had felt that she could never go to Willow to talk about Spike, or to any of the others either. Dawn knew that the only reason Buffy had broken down and told her what she did tell her was because Dawn would come to her in the middle of the night when Buffy was crying and she desperately needed to talk to someone. Dawn also wondered how much Buffy had still edited out when she told Dawn some of the things she and Spike had done together. What Dawn knew was bad enough, anything worse would have been a nightmare.

“So that’s what’s got me worried right now. That and the fact that she’s got a broken collar bone and if she moves around to much she’ll keep the ends of the bones from knitting back together again, and the fact that she’s maintaining a nearly toxic alcohol blood level.”

“I could do a sleep spell on her if you want” Willow said quietly as she was looking over at Buffy. When she felt Dawn jerk away from her she turned to look at Dawn and could see that she was angry, and for once understood why immediately. “No, no, Dawn. White magic, Tara taught it to me, honest. It just helps a person sleep, that’s all it does.” When Willow saw that Dawn was calming back down she continued. “Tara use to do it for girls at school that had to much coffee or were to stressed out to sleep. She could even use it on herself, make herself go to sleep I mean. If she wanted to take a nap but only had a half hour or something she could put herself to sleep and wake up in a half hour all refreshed. She taught me how to do it, but I could never do it on myself like she could. But I could use it on Buffy and she would sleep for an hour or four hours or however long you want. It wouldn’t hurt her and it wouldn’t take anything away from her, memories I mean. She would just sleep, that’s all.”

“Okay Will, sorry I over reacted” Dawn said after letting out a long sigh. “But I don’t think it would be a good idea right now. Because right now I think that if anyone tried to stop Buffy from seeing or talking to Spike, even if he is just an hallucination, she’d probably try to wring their necks.”

“Oh” Willow sighed as she looked back over at Buffy in her bed and could see she was still talking to herself. “Okay, no neck wring for me please. But I only meant it to help Dawn, honest.”

The two of them sat together for another hour, watching Buffy and occasionally saying a few words to each other. Dawns anger at Willow had finally bled off to a tolerable level. She knew that she would always be angry at Willow and Xander and Giles, but at a subsurface level. One she could live with on a day to day level, because she also knew that she would always love the three of them too. Buffy had loved her friends with all her heart and soul. That was why their final betrayal of her had hurt her so badly.

Just before ten Dawn heard Buffy let out a long sigh and when she went over to the bed she could see that Buffy’s eyes were closed and that she was sleeping quietly. Dawn thought about trying to take the bottle of whiskey out of Buffy’s hand and setting it on the nightstand, but decided not to risk it. Sooner or later Buffy would wake up and want the bottle back. If it was on the nightstand she would have to twist her body around to reach it. Dawn didn’t want to risk Buffy doing that and hurting herself. If she dropped the bottle or let it spill in her sleep, so what, there were nine more sitting on the kitchen table.

Since Willow was still in her bunny slippers and nightgown Dawn suggested that she go on home and change and get some rest if she wanted to and come back later in the day. Willow immediately said it wasn’t necessary and going over to the big bag she had carried into the apartment when they first arrived, picked it up and carried it over to the couch. When she opened the bag Dawn could see that she had a couple of changes of cloths in the bag. She also had several books and notebooks, a pair of shoes, her all purpose everyday magic supply bag, a calculator, a box of herbal tea, a half dozen CD disks, combs, brushes and hair products, a blow dryer, and a portable CD player. Willow picked out what she needed and took the items into the bathroom with her. Ten minutes later she came out and put her nightgown and bunny slippers into the bag.

Willow then asked Dawn if she needed to go home for anything. Dawn told her that she was fine for the day, but what they really needed was some real food and some coffee. Dawn knew there was a coffee pot around somewhere because she had bought it for Buffy when she first moved into the apartment. The two of them did a search of the cabinets and the one small closet. They found the coffee pot, dirty with moldy coffee grounds still in it. When Buffy ran out of coffee she must have just put the coffee maker away instead of getting more coffee. They also found a scrub bucket, mop and some sponges, but no cleaning supplies. They made out a list and Dawn went shopping leaving Willow alone with Buffy. Dawn realized immediately that when she told Willow that she was going to leave her alone with Buffy that it had meant a great deal to Willow.

Dawn was only gone about an hour. When she came back the two of them had something to eat and then started cleaning the apartment from top to bottom, staying as quiet as possible so as not to wake Buffy up. When they finished the apartment was clean and smelled a lot better. The one thing they hadn’t been able to do to much about was the thin and very dirty carpet. They didn’t have a vacuum cleaner and couldn’t have used it if they had it without waking Buffy up, but they did agree that in a day or two if Buffy was awake for any length of time and they could do it without a big fuss they would rent a carpet cleaner and heavy duty vacuum cleaner and finish up cleaning the place.

During the cleaning up of the place Willow got a look inside the bag that Dawn had brought with her the night before. She was surprised that besides the medical kit that Dawn had gotten the scissors and the elastic bandages from the big bag was full of weapons. Dawn explained that it was Buffy’s Slayer bag from Rome and that Andrew had sent it to Dawn the past summer, but Dawn had been afraid to leave it with Buffy because of all the weapons. Willow understood what Dawn hadn’t said, that a depressed, grieving and possibly suicidal Buffy shouldn’t have a bag full of deadly weapons laying about.

The rest of the day went quietly as they cleaned the apartment and gathered up all the wet towels from the night before that needed to be taken to the laundry. Dawn also went through all of Buffy’s cloths because she had discovered that almost all of Buffy’s cloths had been put back into the closet and the small dresser dirty. Buffy had apparently worn them and just put them back into the drawers dirty. Dawn felt ashamed of herself for not realizing this situation a long time ago. During the past summer and early fall she had taken Buffy’s cloths to a laundry on a regular basis. But when Buffy had cut back on Dawns visits and had gone into a fit one day about being perfectly capable of washing her own cloths Dawn had stopped doing it for her. Dawn figured that it had probably been at least two months or more since she’d had clean cloths to wear. In fact the panties and top that Dawn was wearing might have been the last ones Buffy had that were clean. Laundry was definitely on the list of things to do the next day.

Just before five Buffy woke up and the first thing she did was take a drink from the whiskey bottle she still had grasped in her hand. Dawn and Willow were at her side within seconds making sure she didn’t try to sit up or move on her own. It took twenty minutes of coaching from Dawn to convince Buffy to eat some of the snaky food items that Willow had purchased the night before. She ate four powdered donuts, a cupcake, two pieces of chocolate and a few potato chips. Dawn also offered her a ham sandwich but she turned it down and Dawn didn’t push. Willow was there through everything, not saying very much but offering support and encouragement. Neither one of them said anything about Buffy continuing to drink from the whiskey bottle even when she was eating donuts, cupcakes and chocolate.

They thought they were going to have a problem when Buffy tried to get out of bed on her own to go to the bathroom. After her first move and the sharp pain that shot through her shoulder and arm she agreed to let Dawn and Willow help her. They helped her to get out of bed slowly without jarring her arm or shoulder and walked her slowly to the bathroom. Dawn went in with her and Buffy allowed Dawn to pull down her panties and help sit down on the toilet. When she finished Dawn got her back on to her feet and pulled her panties up. By the time they walked her back to the bed and got her settled in again Buffy was sweating profusely. As soon as she asked for her bottle, Dawn promptly gave it to her without any fuss. When Buffy turned the bottle up and drank off all that was still in it, Willow silently brought her a fresh bottle after removing the cap.

For the next hour Buffy drank heavily until her eyes became glazed and distant. When she started following something with her eyes and talking to herself they knew that she was seeing Spike again and from her occasional smiles they knew she was happy. During the next eight hours Buffy finished the fresh bottle they had given her and started on a new one. Willow laid down on the couch and took a two hour nap. When she got up to take over watching Buffy, Dawn laid down and got a couple of hours of sleep herself.

When Buffy fell to sleep around two in the morning Dawn gathered up all of the dirty towels, sheets, pillow cases and all of Buffy’s cloths from both her dresser and her closet and carried them out to her car. She then drove fifteen miles across town to a very large and well lit all night Laundromat and spent the next hour and a half washing cloths, folding and packing them out to her car. When she got back Willow helped her bring in all the fresh washed cloths. They put everything where it belonged and the whole apartment had that fresh clean cloths smell.

Buffy slept till after ten in the morning without waking up or moving around in her sleep. When she did wake up she took a small drink from the bottle she had held onto during the night and then handed it to Dawn to set on the nightstand. She talked to both of them occasionally and ate half a ham sandwich for lunch and a juice pack that Dawn had bought out of a vending machine at the Laundromat and brought home with her. She talked to both of them some more, sometimes thanking them for helping her and at other times apologizing for being a burden on them. Mostly she just laid there quietly or slipped off into short naps. When Dawn had to go with her to the bathroom again and this time wipe her butt for her after having a bowel movement she had become extremely embarrassed, had blushed a bright red, and when they got her back to bed she started drinking heavily again. When she finished that bottle Dawn gave her another one without her having to ask for it.

Around nine that night Buffy slowed down on her drinking and started speaking a little more coherently. Willow and Dawn were both exhausted and it took them awhile before they realized that Buffy was having a real time conversation instead of a memory conversation. She seemed to be asking questions some of the time and at other times she was having a conversation about Heaven and how it was different from where Spike had been. Buffy was doing a lot of smiling. Around midnight Buffy looked at Dawn and told her Spike said she was really growing up and he was proud of her. Dawn thanked Spike out loud and waited to see if Buffy would say more to her. Buffy fell to sleep even earlier than the night before and hadn’t drank nearly as much as the previous two days.

Once Dawn was convinced that Buffy was sleeping and hadn’t just nodded off for a few minutes she told Willow that she was going to go home to take a shower, change cloths and bring back some personal items to make staying with Buffy a little more comfortable. Willow told her to take her time and said she would keep an eye on Buffy and would just lay down on the couch to read a book. When Dawn got back to the apartment three hours later Willow was still in the same position she had been in when Dawn had left but was sleeping soundly, still holding on to her book.

Coming back into the apartment woke Willow up, but Dawn didn’t make enough noise to wake Buffy. It took Dawn four trips to bring in everything she’d packed for her stay. Along with extra cloths to wear she’d also brought six pillows, extra blankets, an air mattress and her sleeping bag. With her own personal air mattress, pillow and sleeping bag Dawn could go anywhere and sleep anytime, she was a regular Campfire Girl.

She had also packed up Willows laptop and brought it to her. Dawn knew that Willows computer had her whole world on it; school work, research papers, personal correspondence, e-mail, web links, magic spells and hundreds and hundreds of files. Willow was very grateful that Dawn had thought of bringing her computer to her, but hadn’t even considered asking for it. But with her computer and it’s magically enhanced wi-fi connection she could stay in contact with the whole world and could even do all of her college work and research from Buffy’s apartment and never have to leave.

Dawn gave Willow a couple pillows and a blanket to make her more comfortable on the couch. She then spread a blanket on the floor, to protect her air mattress from any possible slivers of broken glass on the carpet, blew up her air mattress and spread out her sleeping bag. By the time she had all this accomplished she was exhausted, it had been a really long couple of days without much sleep. They turned out all but one light in the bathroom and settled down to get some sleep before Buffy woke up again and needed them. Dawn had been laying in her bed for about fifteen minutes, her eyes heavy with the need for sleep, when she glanced toward Buffy’s bed and seemed to see a vague shimmering image of Spike sitting on the end of Buffy’s bed watching Buffy sleep. When Spike glanced over at Dawn and smiled at her, Dawn smiled back and closed her eyes to sleep.

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