The
Light of Day
Part One
Dawn hadn't cried.
She had refused to go to the funeral, and had instead stayed at home in her sister's room, inhaling the familiar scents that surrounded the woman her sister had been. It had seemed wrong to touch anything, as if moving the unmade bedspread or the rumpled shirt hanging on the doorknob would break all the memories and send them scattering into the wind. So she had found a clear spot on the floor and folded her legs to sit there, letting the undiluted essence of the room keep Buffy alive for just a few more moments.
Starting as the front door opened, Dawn rose guiltily, then settled back onto the floor with a resigned sigh. Footsteps sounded, walking through the front hall, ascending the staircase, hesitating for a moment before passing by. Dawn breathed quietly, willing whoever was in the hall to keep walking, just keep walking, please. When the voice came, she almost screamed.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Willow." I don't need you to frown over me like I can't take care of myself.
"Do you need anything?"
"No." She hated the way she sounded, hated the way she was probably hurting Willow, but she couldn't rouse the energy to apologize.
"I'm right here if you do. Need anything, that is."
"Okay." An unspoken thanks lingered before Dawn heard the door to Willow's room close and latch.
And there Dawn perched, her legs folded under her until the blood flow stopped and tiny needles jabbed along her calves. Until the sun died against the horizon and the birds stopped making noises and the crickets began to chirp in their stead. When full darkness had fallen, Dawn levered herself up, crouched for a minute to allow the blood back into her stiff muscles, and then stood and stretched. She contemplated returning to her room to sleep but doubted her ability to find the relative peace in her own bed. Instead, she kicked off her shoes and curled on Buffy's mattress, pulling the sheets tightly around herself as though warding off the darkness. Sleep, considerate as always, claimed her.
When her eyes opened, he was standing just inside the open window, an unlit cigarette in his hand. A slight breeze shifted the dead weight of his duster and pushed his scent – leather and smoke and alcohol and something unidentifiable but uniquely him – toward Dawn.
"Spike?" she whispered.
He jumped – she didn't know vampires ever jumped – and looked toward the bed. Buffy's bed. "Didn't know you were here, Bit."
"Why are you here?"
"Same reason as you, I suspect. Memories."
"Oh."
They lapsed into a silence that was neither friendly nor uncomfortable; it simply was, in the way that he simply was.
"Are you sober?" she asked finally. "Because I don't think I want to talk to you if you're not."
"You're not talking to me."
"But I want to."
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, I'm sober. No, I haven't yet gone into a bar to down enough alcohol to make the world weave. I don't have to. It can bloody well weave without my help."
"Oh."
Again, the silence, and in it Dawn imagined for a minute that she could hear his heart beating. A ridiculous thought – even if he had been alive, her hearing could not possibly be that sensitive – but a comforting one nonetheless.
"I miss her." Dawn wasn't sure who had spoken, but when she registered the look of shock on Spike's face, she reasoned that it was probably him. Or perhaps they had said it in unison. It didn't matter.
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then Spike dropped his gaze and turned to leave. "Try to get some sleep, Dawn."
"Don't call me that," Dawn hissed, her chest clamping down on her lungs, refusing to allow her breath. "Please don't call me that."
Spike glanced at her, his blue eyes concerned, and then
understanding flooded his expression.
"She called you … that, didn't she?"
"Of course. She was my sister. She called me by my name."
Conflicting emotions passed over his face. "Whatever you want, Nibblet," he said, his voice vaguely confused. Abruptly, he crossed the room to the bed and took Dawn's hand. "Let's leave."
Leave? "Spike, I—"
"I'm not asking you to elope with me, Bit – just come along a moment and we'll find clear air. Help you take a breather, away from this bloody mess."
"No, Spike, I … I can't leave. It's not right, and I'd have to tell Willow, because if she came to check on me she'd worry if I was gone, and what if something happens?" What if someone comes while I'm gone and changes the room, moves the bedspread or takes the shirt off the doorknob and then I come back and Buffy's gone and I can't find her again?
"Willow's a big witch, pet. She can take care of herself." He paused, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his sweeping duster, cast about as if searching for something else to say. His eyes lit on the windowsill, and a tiny lopsided smile appeared on his face. "'Sides, I know you've always wanted to climb out the window and down the tree."
Actually, the idea of sneaking away from her sister through her sister's bedroom had never occurred to Dawn, but now that Spike had proposed it, it did sound interesting. "Only if you go first," she said hesitantly. "And stand underneath so that when I fall off you catch me."
"You're not going to fall off."
"You don't know that."
"You're not going to fall off."
"You're the most difficult person I've ever met."
Spike shrugged, flashed her that special wicked grin he reserved for her. "Vampire, remember?"
"Most of the time."
"All of the time." His face turned serious in the span of a half-second. "Don't forget that, luv. I'm always a vampire."
"But you're a different vampire. I mean I've met other vampires," said Dawn, wrinkling her nose, "but none of them are like you. They're all alike, and you're different."
"Right. Push me into a spot of sunlight and see how different I really am."
"I don't mean that you're different vampirely." She frowned at his attempt to contain a chuckle.
"Physically?" he supplied.
"Physically. Whatever. Vampirely should be a word."
"I'll put in the good word with Webster when I see him next."
"Bad pun, Spike."
"Agreed. My apologies. What were you saying?"
"What I was saying was that you're kind of like Angel—" She held up her hand when he opened his mouth as if to protest and hastened on, "But not really. Angel was all nice when he had his soul, but he was evil without it. You're just sort of nice and evil at once all the time."
"Thank you for the insightful psychoanalysis, Dr. Summers."
Despite herself, Dawn smiled and slapped at his arm playfully. "Stop it."
"Do you charge by the hour, or by the session?"
"Do you ever shut up?"
"Rarely."
Another pause, this one almost contented. "Where did you want to go?" Dawn asked at last. "And do I really want to climb out the window to get there?" The window. Buffy's window. Resolutely, she banished the thoughts.
"Graveyard," he said, regarding her levelly. "Pay my respects. Pay yours as well."
Suddenly nauseated, Dawn shook her head and shrank away from him. "No. Not yet, I mean, not, not—no, Spike."
"You've got a better suggestion?"
"Um, not going to the graveyard – which is full of vampires – in the middle of the night?"
He cocked his head to the side, his eyes never straying from her face. "Suppose you'd rather have a look in the daytime? Fancy seeing the famous Spike impression of a lit candle?"
"Well, yes." At his look, Dawn hurried on to amend her statement. "I'd rather go in the daytime. I don't want to see you in a lot of flames."
"Right, then." Brushing his hands down his black jeans as if to rid them of something, Spike moved to the window and climbed halfway out of it before Dawn thought to call him back in.
"Where are you going?"
"Already told you."
"Stay here." She hated herself immediately as the words left her mouth, but she didn't retract them. "I don't want to be alone."
"There are people here you can talk to. I told you where I was going, and I'm leaving now. You want to come, you have about thirty seconds to decide." His other leg disappeared from the room and only the faintest rustle of the leaves outside the window allowed her to monitor his descent.
Several deep breaths later, Dawn swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, fighting the slight dizziness that accompanied the sudden change of orientation. She tiptoed to the window and leaned carefully around the frame until one of her eyes could see the yard. Spike was still there, waiting, she guessed, for her to decide to come along on his crazy pilgrimage. Well, I'm definitely not going with him, which is why I'm putting on my shoes and climbing out the window and down the tree – just to tell him to go away, which I could do perfectly well from the room and oh God, I'm actually doing this. I'm creeping out of the house in the middle of the night to visit my sister's grave.
He nodded at her when she dropped to the ground, but didn't say anything; he just started gliding – he really does glide – toward the graveyard, his black coat blending with the shadows. Despite the relative warmth of the summer night, Dawn felt a chill and hastened to keep up with him.
It wasn't far to the simple gravestone that marked Buffy's plot in the cemetery. And Dawn felt strangely unmoved looking at it, as if the stone meant nothing more to her than those surrounding it. A block of hardened minerals with a name carved into it; nothing special, really. It didn't mark anything about Buffy except that she was dead, and everyone already knew that.
"What is this?" Dawn whispered.
Spike turned his head sideways to look at her and cocked an eyebrow. "Tombstone. Marks a grave."
"I know that. I mean, what is it really? Everyone knows she's dead. Everyone knows she's not coming back. Why do they need a piece of stone to say that? Why can't they just put her in a hole and forget about her, and why can't we just be, like other people can just be, instead of you having to sneak around in the dark and me having to be something I'm not and everyone pretending like it's okay when it's really not—" She stopped, shuddering, no tears coming to her eyes but a dead weight centered on her back, a burden that forced her to her knees on the soft dirt. Kneeling there, her back hunched, Dawn clutched her arms around herself and bit her lip until she tasted blood.
"Dawn." His voice was so soft, so artificially calm, that she couldn't bear to hear it.
"Get away from me."
"No. I can't leave you out here like this."
"Fuck you," she said levelly. "Fuck you, Spike."
He flinched at her profanity but didn't leave her; instead, he crouched beside her and tried reaching out to touch her arm. It was this final sympathetic gesture that broke her resolve.
Her fist connected with something in his face that gave way before her knuckles. Ignoring the stinging in her hand, she lashed out again, this time pummeling his shoulder, his chest, anywhere she could reach. At some point she didn't mark, they had both scrambled to their feet, and she stood beside him, her height almost equal to his, and hit him until she could barely muster the strength to raise her arms. Then, with an incoherent scream, she spun and sprinted away, her shoes cutting furrows in the cemetery ground.
Though she couldn't hear him moving, Dawn was sure that Spike had followed her and ran faster, determined to elude her pursuer. Why? Why am I running from him? Why is he following me home? Why didn't he defend himself?
The question of Why? lingered even after Dawn burst through the front door of her house and took the stairs up to her room two at a time. It lingered as she tore off her clothes and pulled on her pajamas. It lingered as she switched off the light and climbed into bed. And it lingered as she pulled the sheet up over her head, curled into a tight fetal position, and drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep.
Part Two
Spike stumbled through the front door of 1630 Revello Drive fully a minute behind Dawn. His undignified entrance was punctuated by a collision with a wall that he could've sworn hadn't been there before and by the sudden appearance of one bedraggled witchlet.
Willow's hair was in disarray; it framed her drained green eyes in a frazzled red mass. Her weariness showed in the slump of her shoulders, in the thin set line of her mouth. Nevertheless, she stood before him, her hand wrapped firmly around a stake, and said, "Would you like to explain why Dawn just broke the sound barrier running into the house and up the stairs?"
He retreated into the shadows cast by the wall next to him, unwilling to let Willow see his bloody face. This is where you think fast, his mind informed him. Come up with something plausible, like—oh, maybe she fell and skinned her knee? He considered and discarded several possible explanations for Dawn's behavior, and then inexplicably found himself telling the truth. "Took her to see the Slayer's grave," he mumbled. "Thought it'd help her with the anger and all."
Nothing about Willow's demeanor softened. "You pulled her out of bed in the middle of the night to visit a cemetery?"
"To visit Buffy." His voice caught at her name; he blinked twice in quick succession before automatically reaching for his cigarettes. He had almost pulled them out when the subtle tightening of Willow's lips warned him against lighting one in the house.
Storing the stake in a pocket, Willow folded her arms, her eyes never straying from him. "Because?"
"Thought the Bit needed it."
"Not because you needed it?"
Looking away, he said, "That too."
She watched him in silence for a moment, her eyes seeking his across the space that separated them while he busily avoided looking at her. "Spike, she has to get through this her own way. Your way doesn't work for everyone."
He smiled at that, smiled in his own special bitter way. "Should bloody well hope not. She's too young for my way."
"And you're too old."
"Who, me? I'm ageless, luv."
"No. You're too old and too responsible to go out and – do not-so-happy things."
His mouth opened in denial. "Red, I think you might've dabbled a little much in something that's affecting—"
"I don't mean responsible in a responsible way," Willow tried. "It's not like that. I mean that you're responsible for Dawn because she lets you be responsible for her. She wouldn't talk to me earlier today, but you, she talks to and listens to. You have to do something with that, because I can't. I don't know, I…I just don't know how to deal with…how to…. You have to…." The earnestness, the entreaty in her eyes was just too much.
"Do what?" he snapped. "Tell her it's all going to be like a bloody marvelous vacation from reality? Tell you what, pet, this isn't a fucking walk in the park. This is death, and she knows what's going on."
"Spike—"
He held up a hand to cut her off. "I'm not some sort of big brother to the innocent, either. I'm here because I made a promise, because I like the halfling. Not because I'm going to be part of your little scheme to create the half-cocked reality you'd like to have." Without realizing it, he had stepped into the circle of light cast by the lamp nearest Willow, and she sucked in a breath at catching sight of his face.
"God, Spike, what happened to you?"
He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Had a little scrap with a feisty devil who didn't want me tagging along with her."
All the concern in Willow's expression turned to pure malice. "If you did anything, anything, to hurt her, you'll see exactly what sort of magic I 'dabble' in."
Spike threw up his hands and turned his back to her before giving an exasperated groan and spinning back around. "I didn't hurt her – wouldn't hurt her to save my life. Christ, Will, you should know—"
"I know," Willow said, biting her lip, her red hair brushing over her cheeks as she leaned her head forward. A tear slid down her nose and dropped off the end. "I know you wouldn't."
Oh bugger, here it goes again. There was a certain predictability in the reactions of the Scoobies to Buffy's death. Dawn became silent. Willow cried. Tara comforted. Xander worked. Anya bustled. Giles researched. And Spike stood still and watched them, his uselessness making him feel, well, useless. "Um, right, then," he muttered, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands deeply into his pockets, looking anywhere but at the silently weeping witch. "I'll be getting home."
Willow's head came up at that and her eyes caught his for the first time. "Please stay? I want Dawn to have someone around who—"
"Who what? Who she can beat on until she feels better? Not bloody likely, Wicca."
"No! No, it's just that Dawn and I – I mean, we're close, and we've known each other since, well, we've sort of known each other for a long time, but she … looks up to you. She respects you."
"And like I said, no big brother here. Sure I like the Bit, but she's one of yours." He held up a hand to cut Willow off when she opened her mouth to speak. "And don't give me any sort of sodding, 'We really do like you, Spike, now that you can't do a thing for yourself because you have a hunk of plastic in your brain.'"
They stood there for a moment, the witch staring at the vampire and the vampire returning the gesture, neither budging an inch. At last, Spike sighed, broke away from Willow's gaze. "That serious, are you?"
"Yes."
A long pause, and then he sighed deeply again and directed his attention toward the ceiling. "You women have no bloody idea what you do to me," he muttered. "Now I expect you'll make me sleep on the couch."
Willow shrugged helplessly, and said, softly, "There's Buffy's—"
"No."
"Or not. Then yes, you sleep on the couch. Or maybe the floor? I don't know – whatever's more comfortable for you." She looked at him again as if appraising him. "Do you need blankets or anything?"
"I'll be fine." He brushed past her, walked the rest of the way into the house, and shrugged off his duster.
"Um, Spike?"
When he turned around, he could see her outlined in the faint glow of the living hall light. He raised an eyebrow.
"Thanks."
"Get out of here before I change my mind. Don't expect me to stick around every time one of your lot feels weepy."
The smile on her face was entirely too knowing. "Thanks anyway."
"Upstairs with you, then."
Willow nodded brusquely. "I'll see you in the morning."
The disturbingly comforting memory of her smile lingered long after the witch climbed the stairs and disappeared from view.
TBC