Dawn forgot how cold L.A. could get at night. And when you're crouched atop a ten-thousand foot-high peak nicknamed 'Mt. Baldy,' it's even colder.

"Wh-where is this g-guy?" she chatters at Spike.

The glow of his cigarette filter is the only light save the smoggy flickering of the cities below. "Five more minutes, then we bail."

She wraps his coat more tightly around herself. She's wound even tighter on the inside. For months she's been hopscotching the globe in failed attempts to rid the ghost at her heels; now she's waiting to summon him up again? There's no way this won't end badly.

At least she's not alone.

"Spike?"

"Mm."

"How come - how come we never saw you? After Sunnydale. After you came back."

Silence seems silent-er, up here at the precipice of the world.

"Didn't feel right," he says finally. And Dawn knows Spike, knows him as well as anyone, and she's sure he's telling the truth. His truth, at any rate.

"Stopped by, once," Spike offers. "Spoke to Andrew."

"I heard. Thanks for making the effort." God, she really should not be sniping at him, not when he could get pissed and leave her here to face her sins with only the coyotes for company.

"Should I have waited around? Camped out in the doorway and force my way back into your lives?"

"Well, it worked when I did it to you," she can't help pointing out. He doesn't answer.

"I was lonely," Dawn goes on, cringing at herself but unable to stop. "I didn't have any friends there. And Italian guys have a really...different definition of personal space."

"I showed you how to deal with that."

She blows out a frustrated breath, watches it evaporate in the frigid night air. "Did you honestly expect me to castrate every boy who tried to cop a feel? And that's not what matters, not really."

"What does matter?" There's no sarcasm or bitterness or irony-overdose in the question. For some reason that makes Dawn want to cry.

"You didn't come for me."

"You didn't come for me either, Dawn. Not 'til you needed something." Spike is so calm and resigned, and Dawn thinks, he should be shouting that.

It's brutal, that calmness. He's been so...kind to her, since she told him about the Immortal; acting like the friend that she needs but she senses it's a performance put on solely for her benefit. He takes care of Dawn because he can't not. And he's putting himself aside in the process, firmly and wholly.

She should be flattered - it's all about Dawn, finally - but she knows she's only getting a soaped-up, sanitized version of the real Spike. She wants to goad him into anger or affection - hell, she'll take any emotional display she can get.

But she's not a little kid anymore. She doesn't get a free pass just because she's mystical and angsty; it's just Spike is no longer an excuse to take without giving back.

"I'm sorry." Her words emerge weak and small (just like her?), but they're out there now, she won't take them back and if Spike tries to hurl them back in her face like he did with Buffy -

The single light is suddenly gone; Spike's stubbed out his cigarette. "Think this is our bloke."

Dawn rises, eyes stinging. She's afraid, all over again - of the stranger they're supposed to be meeting; of encountering the Immortal again, even in some vague otherworldly form; of what he might tell Spike about her (that she's a nasty thoughtless killer, that no one can love her without paying for it somehow, that it should have been her who died).

She's afraid her apology has been swallowed up by the chasm of chill civility between them.

Ahead, a slight, balding man hurries up the path. He twitches occasionally, eyes darting in a nervous circuit between Spike, Dawn and the ground beneath him.

"Oh, this is going to be good," Spike mutters. "'Communing with the Dead, starring Caspar Milquetoast.'"

"Who?" Dawn asks, but the Metaphysical Liaison has reached them. "Spike," he says, panting slightly. "And Miss Summers."

"That's right," Dawn answers cautiously. The man bears a superficial resemblance to Doc - wrinkled, papery skin and grasping hands - but that also describes her Sunnydale High Ethics teacher so she'll reserve judgment.

"You're late," Spike tells him sharply. "No funny stuff, right? No bleeding the little girl, or trancing her, or anything else to maybe steal some of her juice for yourself."

The Liaison draws back, clearly affronted. "Thank you for meeting us," Dawn covers hastily. "I really hope you can help."

He relaxes, turns rheumy eyes to hers. "I will try. Although I may discover what this being desires, I cannot provide it. That is not where my power lies." God, they all have the same cadence of speech, these detached wise men, these bystanders to death and despair.

"I understand," Dawn assures, before Spike can aggravate him further. "I'm ready whenever you are."

He smiles. "Then let's begin."

***

"You know," Xander says, "maybe Dawn just wants to be left alone."

"Why?" Buffy challenges. "Because you do?"

She's filled him in on recent events - the Immortal's death, Buffy's reaction, Dawn's subsequent departure - but Xander remains unmoved. He sits at the kitchen table, arms crossed, showered and not too pleased about it.

She's scrubbed and scoured for half a day, because if she can't cleanse Xander's soul she can at least make some headway on his living conditions. "It was a misunderstanding," she goes on, knuckles white around a dishrag. "I freaked out, and Dawn got scared, and neither one of us was thinking clearly. I have to find her before she and Spike both disappear again."

"That's got nothing to do with me, Buffy. I'm not the sidekick anymore. These days I'm more into survival."

"Right. If that's what you want to call it, Xander." The doorbell buzzes and she doesn't miss the way he startles in his chair. "Here," she tells him, and digs into her jeans pocket for cash. "Pay the guy, then we eat, then we search."

"What's in it for me?"

"Forty bucks worth of Thai food, if you hurry."

"Ha, ha." But he gets up and returns with a bulging paper bag that he sets on the counter. "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean." She spoons a generous helping of sesame chicken and rice into a bowl, slides it over to him. He stares at it, then at Buffy.

"What?" she asks. "I can nurture."

He shrugs and attacks the food. Buffy does the same; all she's eaten for the past twenty hours has been something called a 'bistro bag' provided by the airline.

"I bet he was the one," Xander says. She looks at him in confusion.

"The one. Your Slay-tastic soulmate, your life partner in all things apocalyptic." The words are pure Xander but the tone - scraping and cruel and hatefully triumphant - is not.

"Your condolences leave a lot to be desired."

"And now he's gone," Xander continues, obviously warming to his topic, "and you've lost your chance. You never told him what he really meant to you and now you never can."

"I told him -"

Xander's laughter is raw, mocking. "C'mon, Buffy. I've known you for a long time. You didn't tell him anything that would have cost you. We're the same like that."

"You're drunk."

"No, I'm just a mean sober. It's true, anyway. We pretend that we're looking for the real thing, but we're really just cowards. I've got country music and comic books and you've got...that whole thing with Angel, I guess...and we're both hanging tight to the fantasy. Because we know it'll never come around. And then we won't have to love, and then we won't have to hurt. Here's the funny part, though - it hurts anyway. Hurts like a bitch. God, Anya'd appreciate that. She did like to take things literally. It hurts like a bitch, so we end up just as miserable and twice as alone."

Tears flow freely as he stares her down. Buffy doesn't cry, though. Buffy is a warrior, and her impenetrability makes it possible for everyone else to laugh, love, weep, hope. It's her hardness that lets them be soft. She'll fight on the front lines and huddle protectively over her heart the rest of the time and she won't apologize for it, she won't; they resent her because they need her, he left her because she couldn't love him back the way he wanted and the way she never asked him to love her, he took in her little sister because Dawn knows how to soothe his scorched soul and Buffy is merely the disapproving, scar-tissue memory -

She meets Xander's gaze; he'll see that she may be broken but she's still unbowed. "No," she tells him. "The Immortal wasn't the one."

An ugly grin splits his features. "But I'm right about the rest." He stands, shoves the half-eaten dish away. "And maybe I wasn't talking about the Immortal."

Buffy watches him root around in a drawer under the sink and finally unearth a stained and tattered cocktail napkin. There's a lewd logo of a naked woman and the words 'SIN-DER-ELLA'S EXOTIC DANCING AND RIBS' beneath.

Scrawled below Sin-Der-Ella's impressive bustline is an address.

"Spike's apartment," Xander says, tossing the napkin at her. "Franklin and Orange. I'll drive."

Part 6: Wire Tripping

Aretha Franklin - Do Right Woman, Do Right Man Contact me if the link dies, and I'll refresh it.

"Spike's apartment." I lived here, on the seventh floor, until moving to Laguna. Hollywood was still skeevy and downtrodden then, but now these four square blocks have become the Kodak Theater and the Hollywood&Highland shopping center.

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