Reverse Engineering



Okay, I've dunked my head in the sink and drank a few gallons of fruit juice, so I'm feeling a little less zombie and a little more vampire.

She's still not making sense, though.

I'm sat opposite her at the kitchen table. I'm trying to listen to her plan and not care that my hair is a complete mess.

I flatten it with my hand in what I hope is a nonchalant manner.

"I've decided," she's saying, firmly. "My mind is totally made up. I know it's a bit iffy, so I didn't tell anybody else, but if I could bring her back and I didn't that would be bad, right? Like murder?"

She's got this pleading look in her eyes that makes me want to agree that leaving things as they stand is tantamount to murder, but there's this little thing called hindsight that she doesn't seem to be capable of learning from.

"Er, Titch? Remember what happened the last time you tried your hand at necromancy?"

I'm not playing along this time. No way. She can fetch her own sodding Ghora's eggs.

"This is different."

"No it's not love," I tell her wearily. "I don't care what method you use, bringing people back from the dead is dodgy. I was in the business myself for the better part of a century and I've been brought back myself, so I think I'm entitled to know something about it. Nothing good's going to come of going to those types for help, which you of all people should realise. Christ! If I hadn't let that twat go DNA-gazing in the first place, he wouldn't have told Glory who you are and Buffy would still be...still be..."

I'm vaguely appalled to find I can't continue.

I'm not going to cry again. Not in front of the girl.

Happy thoughts.

Slapping Xander.

That time Dru let a hen loose in Angelus bedroom and the big tosser's phobia kicked in and made him stand on the desk, panicking until I got rid of it.

Buffy kissing me when she found out I hadn't let on to Glory who Dawn was and...

Ah Hell. Bang go the happy thoughts.

"Spike? That's not what happened."

"Huh?"

She's looking at me like I'm an idiot.

"That's not how she found out I was the key. Tara told her by accident when she was brain-sucked. I thought you knew."

I didn't realise how much guilt I'd been carrying over that until I feel it lift.

I have a momentary stab on empathy for Peaches, playing Vamp Detective in Los Angeles. Atonement's like masochism that way. The pain's almost worth it because it feels so good when it stops. I wonder for a second if Angel gets off on the atonement. Probably. Dawn meanwhile is rattling on like nothing happened.

"Okay, so I made a list of maybes first. I went through all the freaky stuff I could remember and listed it, then I tried to mix and match things that might fit. I ended up with a huge list of ways to bring her back, but they all had flaws. It was weird how much there was though. I guess anything's possible on a hellmouth."

This is where she lost me first time round.

"What?"

"Remember Willow's 'I will it so' spell?"

Snogging Buffy. Yep, I definitely remember that.

"Suppose she cast it again and said 'It is my will that Buffy be brought back to life'? That's just one example. What about that spell Jonathon cast last year, he managed to create an entirely new reality."

"And a crazed demon."

"I didn't say it was perfect, I said it was a possibility. Then there's your creepy sexbot."

"Firstly its head's come off. Secondly it isn't Buffy, just a good imitation and thirdly, who the hell told you I was sleeping with the robot?"

She looks mildly insulted.

"What am I, four? Nobody told me. It was obvious, plus you just confirmed it."

I don't like this girl. She's always just a little quicker than you give her credit for.

"Anyway you could easily get a new head for it and we could put the real Buffy in it using this."

She pulls a sheet of paper from her backpack. I recognise the language, but I don't speak Latin well enough to translate. I read it aloud, trying to sound it out.

"Quod perditum est invernator..."

"I printed it off Willow's computer while she was asleep. It's the curse to restore somebody's soul."

I drop the paper like a hot potato. She let me read that aloud?

"Calm down, it won't work without an orb of Thessula."

I try to pretend I was never worried it might work on me to begin with.

"So you'd put her soul in the robot?"

"It's doable. You can have people's souls in inanimate objects. There was one in a ventriloquist's dummy the year we moved here. Plus thanks to you being creepy pervert guy the robot's pretty realistic. It walks, it talks, it slays..."

...it gives great head.

"Or we could use a vengeance demon."

I'd tuned out for a moment. I tune back in again, rapidly.

"What? You mean Anya?"

"Actually, I meant Willow. Demon personnel guy wouldn't let Anya have her powers back, but he told Willow she could join up whenever she liked. One of us could wish we'd stopped her evil skankyness sooner and she could grant it."

"But Willow would be stuck as a demon."

She shakes her head.

"All you have to do is smash her necklace. She'd be human again just like Anya."

You know, I'm beginning to think she's right. Anything is possible on a Hellmouth.

I glance over at the notebook she's getting all this from. Page after page of neat handwriting. She's been thinking about this for ages. I don't know why I'm surprised, after what happened with Joyce. Dawn isn't exactly one to roll over and accept things.

I get another pang of guilt at that, because generally I am the type to roll over and accept things.

But she's still wrong. Doc was into Necromancy because he was one of the bad guys. Nothing good can come of dabbling there. Good guys let things be and I'm one of the good guys now, or at least trying to be. It's what Buffy would have wanted.

"Then I was thinking about how she was able to take my place. That's when I worked it out. I persuaded Will to let me read some of her spellbooks while I was over there and you pretty much gave me the last piece of info when I was asking you about my blood."

Is it just me or is Dawnie getting just a little too good at manipulating people?

That girl's going to be lethal when she's older.

"The monk guys made me out of Buffy. They just tweaked stuff magically to make me different and gave everybody fake memories, but Buffy's blood contained the template for creating me, which means..."

That if I can hunt down one of those monks, we've got a template for bringing back Buffy.

Jesus H. Christ.

Necromancy abomination. Necromancers evil.

I get that.

I do.

But monks?

The ones who tried to save Dawn in the first place?

The good guys?

They're not in the necromancy business. They're in the creation business and that's a whole other ball game.

Sanctified.

Ordained by the big guy.

And suddenly it doesn't seem like a sin to let myself hope any more.

Where did those monks live anyway, Czechoslovakia?

It's worth a look.


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