***************************************

The house smelled like death.

Not actual corpses, which Xander knew from experience. Rather the cloyingly sweet scent of too many flowers; the ripe aroma of unfamiliar casseroles brought by neighbors who normally avoided the Summers house. But this had been Tara’s home, more than the dormitory or the place where she grew up. And so this was where death settled.

He supposed it was fitting that Spike sat in the chair across from him.

Over the past few weeks Xander had comforted himself with the thought that if anyone could protect Dawn, and maybe even Buffy, it was this loathsome freak. Sure, he couldn’t hurt humans but Xander suspected that humans weren’t their biggest worry. So at night, in between thoughts of Anya and worry over Willow and apprehension about Buffy, Xander had told himself that if anyone could handle this, Spike could. And he had: Buffy and Dawn were home and safe. Spike had come through; Spike had done the right thing.

And as soon as Xander laid eyes on him, lounging on the couch where Joyce had breathed her last, he’d wanted to pummel Spike so badly he could taste it. He wanted to hear his bones crunch, see his firm white flesh split open. He hated Spike, hated him for continuing to exist while Tara was in the ground. It should have been him. It wasn’t fair.

Welcome back, you bastard.

***************************************

Buffy hesitated, hovered just outside her sister’s door. It seemed so wrong that she should help anyone through this mourning. It seemed like she was killing Tara all over again.

Dawn was playing music, songs Buffy didn’t recognize. But the melody touched something weepy and wretched inside her. She closed her eyes for a moment, then pushed the door open.

Dawn looked up from where she lay on the bed. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Buffy leaned against the doorframe, watching her sister warily. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.” Dawn nodded to a hand-labeled CD case on her bedstand. “Xander and I talked. I missed him.”

“He’s a great friend.”

Xander hadn’t knocked when he came over last night; he had just walked in and when Buffy turned around in the kitchen and saw him standing there with a sad, wry smile on his face she burst into tears. His eyes filled too, spilled over, but he’d wrapped her in his strong warm arms while she babbled out apologies. They’d sat for the longest time, then, at the kitchen table. He didn’t press her about her time away, didn’t demand to know how Spike fit into all of this. He’d just held her hand, and stroked her hair. And even though there was bitterness in his gaze she’d eventually accepted that it was not directed at her. Like Giles, like Dawn, he’d forgiven Buffy before she could ask.

“He brought me some music,” Dawn went on. “I don’t really know it, but it’s incredibly sad and it makes me cry, and feel better. If that makes any sense.”

“It does,” Buffy said. “I’ll let you borrow one of my Sarah McLachlan CDs if you want.”

“Um, thanks but no thanks. I want to be self-indulgent, not suicidal.” She covered her mouth as soon as she’d spoken the words. “Dumb joke. Shouldn’t joke about – stuff like that.”

“I think Tara would have smiled at that. She’s probably smiling now.”

“Is she –“ Dawn struggled for the right words. “What happened to her – it was awful. I guess I just want to know…where she is now – is it worth it? Is it worth what went before?”

Buffy shut her eyes briefly. Oh, how she dreaded thinking of That Place. Because it was so exquisite, so peaceful and protected. It made This Place so much rawer in comparison.

“I hate that I was the one who hurt her,” Buffy murmured finally. “I hate that her last thoughts must have been of pain and betrayal and fear. I even hate that she would have forgiven me. Easily.” Her eyes pricked and she wiped a small hand across them almost angrily.

“But…yes. I don’t know how to explain this – there aren’t words in our language. It’s worth it, Dawn. It’s worth anything. And the idea that we’re capable of earning it? Incredible. Mind-boggling. I mean, duh. None of us can really deserve it, and yet it’s there for us anyway. I know not everyone will get to see…” Buffy swallowed, “heaven, but we all get the chance. If people knew, they’d be tripping over each other to do the right thing.”

Dawn appeared to digest this. “Where do you think Willow is?” she asked after a minute.

Probably avoiding me, ‘cause of how I murdered the love of her life and all.

“Probably…just getting through this. In her own way. She and Tara had something incredible, something special.” And they appreciated it; they didn’t resent it or ridicule it or fear it. They didn’t leave it lying on cold pavement or abandon it with a few words of self-righteous psychobabble.

“How will she ever be able to love anybody else again? She had the real thing, Buffy. I mean, I haven’t had it,” she added hastily when Buffy’s eyes suddenly sharpened. “But I could tell. Now it’ll be in her head, forever. That she had that and lost it. And won’t that just make her heart keep breaking?”

***************************************

“You enjoying this?”

Spike stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This.” Xander gestured around him. “Your leavings.”

Now Spike glared. “What are you on about now, Harris? None of this was my doing.”

Xander laughed. “You don’t think so? God, you stupid vampire. Don’t you even get it?

“This is what it looks like, after you – you and Angel – got through with a place. Never mind the blood; this is just the grief. What’s left over once you’ve torn apart families. Friends. Take a good long look, Spike. It might not have been your hands and your fangs this time, but believe me – this is nothing worse than what you’ve done.”

“I liked Tara,” Spike said, but the words sounded weak and hollow to his own ears.

Xander grinned nastily.

“You know,” he replied, “I think you did. I think, given the chance, you’d spare her life. Maybe even help her out if she needed it. And you know what? That doesn’t mean shit to me. So you managed to have an iota of compassion for somebody you’ve known for two years? Well, strike up the band. Let’s have a parade down Wilkins Drive in your honor.

“What about all the anonymous men and women that crossed your path, Spike? What about them? They made a difference, somewhere, and we’ll never know how. They were loved, by people we’ve never even met. Every time you took one of those lives, you broke someone’s heart. Did you ever even think about that?”

Spike remembered the night he’d thought the chip had crapped out. How he’d strutted and snarled, until he’d found that sweet, scared morsel on the street. That pretty little girl who’d pleaded even as she scrambled back from him. “This might hurt a little,” he’d told her. She had been someone’s Tara.

She had been someone’s Buffy.

For the first time he looked at that encounter not as a humiliating failure, but as…something else. Something that was too terrifying to contemplate (blessing) so he shut his eyes tight, wanting only to erase all this death and human frailty from his mind.

Xander’s pain-hardened voice cut through his recalcitrance. “Did they call out, those people? Those families you ripped apart? Did children cry for their mothers? Did brothers try to protect sisters? Did old couples cling to each other even as they died?”

Spike opened his mouth to let fly a vicious retort, something that would shut the boy up good and proper, something that would cause him to slink away in ignominy.

But he had nothing to say.

Xander raised his head. The strains of an old, despondent tune could be heard above them.

“Come on, Spike. Don’t tell me the thrill is gone.”

Part 17: Survivor

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