Dawn quickly found that sleep was a lost cause tonight.

She tossed and turned, each soft creak or slight sound that she might usually have attributed to the "house settling", whatever that meant, now became a dark threat. Had her sister, who suddenly seemed a stranger to her, slipping through the darkness across the hall to her room, ready to carry out the horrifying threat she had used against Spike?

And what about Spike?

Was he all right, down there in the basement alone, locked in, and probably chained up?

Restless and sick with worry, Dawn had tossed and turned a bit more, before sitting up and pulling out the baby monitor, turning it on again, hoping for some sign of how her friend was doing. She turned on the speaker, and checked for the little red light to be sure it was on, when she heard nothing at all.

Complete and total silence.

*Maybe he's asleep,* she thought hopefully, though the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach only intensified as she listened to the stillness, hoping for some sign that her friend was even still there. *Or -- or he got away!* she thought with a rush of irrational hope. *Or she -- she wouldn't have...no, she didn't...*

Dawn jumped out of bed, silently stepping to her doorway and stopping for a moment, peering into the darkness of the hallway, listening for any sound to indicate that anyone besides her was awake at the moment. No sound met her ears, so she slipped out into the hall, padding down the stairs in her bare feet and pajamas, glancing behind her once or twice in her continued fear that the monster that was her sister might be lying in wait, ready to catch her by surprise.

She walked silently into the kitchen, glancing again behind her nervously as she made her way to the basement door, and was not surprised to find the padlock Buffy had put on it, firmly in place and locked. She pulled at it for a moment, then rolled her eyes at her own foolishness.

If Buffy was going to go to all that trouble to keep her from finding Spike, she was not going to use a cheap lock.

After all, she *did* have a history of getting into her sister's secret things.

She glanced at the other side of the door, trying to see how the hinges were attached, wondering if there was a possibility of opening the door that way. She swallowed hard, frowning with uncertainty, drawing in a deep breath. She was pretty sure that she could get the door off its hinges, but not so sure that she could do it silently, or that she could get it back on unnoticed when she was finished.

She needed advice.

She needed a plan.

She needed Tara.

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

Tara's sleepy eyes widened in shock when she looked through the peephole on the door of her apartment, to find the Slayer's little sister standing there, anxiously looking back down the hall the way she had come.

She quickly opened the door, drawing the girl in and glancing around the hallway before quietly shutting the door again.

"Dawn! What are you doing, Sweetie? Did you come all the way across town by yourself?"

Dawn nodded, biting her lower lip and staring up at the older girl through wide, fearful eyes. Tara took in her expression with dismay, noting that Dawn was trembling violently, either with the cold of the night, or some as yet unnamed emotion; and her eyes were brimming with tears that she was struggling to keep back from falling.

"Dawnie?" she said softly, uncertainly, a concerned frown on her face. "What is it, Sweetie? What...?" Memory finally managed to pierce the fog of her sleep, and Tara glanced down then, to see the small tape recorder clutched in Dawn's shaking hand. "What...what did you hear?" she asked finally in a gentle whisper, reaching down to take it from her hand.

They had decided that, since the actual recording would be taking place late at night, it would be better to meet the next day and go over it, rather than to arouse Buffy's suspicions by Dawn's calling Tara from the house -- let alone sneaking out in the middle of the night to go to her apartment.

But Tara was quickly getting the impression that whatever Dawn had heard had left the girl with little choice but to seek her comfort.

"W-we have to get him out of there," Dawn whispered, her wide, stricken eyes locked onto Tara's in horrified shock. "Tara -- it was awful...she...she..." She shook her head, words failing her to describe it, before repeating intently, her voice trembling with the tears that now streaked her face, "...we have to get him out of there, right away..."

Tara thought for a moment, realizing that whatever Dawn had heard, it had to be very serious to bring about this reaction -- and also realizing that it probably meant that Buffy was very dangerous, and risking running into her in the process of rescuing Spike was probably not a good idea.

"Okay -- okay, Dawnie, listen -- we need to work this out," she said, her voice carefully level and calm as she held the girl's gaze firmly. "Is Buffy asleep right now?"

Dawn nodded. "I think so. She -- she went to bed."

"And does she work tomorrow?"

Dawn nodded, sniffing back her tears, which were beginning to ebb as she found something practical on which to focus her thoughts, rather than the horrific verbal pictures still etched into her mind. "She goes in at ten."

"So," Tara concluded carefully, studying the younger girl's expression. "We can be pretty sure that she's not going to do anything to Spike between now and then -- right? It's like, four o'clock now. So -- if she has to get up by nine or so, there's no way she'd have time...right?"

Dawn nodded, rolling her eyes in disgust toward her sister. "She usually oversleeps anyway."

"Okay -- okay, good," Tara nodded, thinking it through as she went along. "So -- we're safe to assume that Spike's not going to get hurt any worse between now and ten tomorrow. It's probably better if we wait until she's at work to get him out of there. Then, we can meet with the others before she gets off, show them...the tape...and see what we can come up with to stop her. Okay?"

Dawn nodded, her tears ebbing now, but still subdued and heavyhearted from the things she had heard.

"Is he -- okay, do you think?" Tara asked hesitantly, her features twisted in an apprehensive grimace of concern.

Dawn bit her lip uncertainly, shaking her head as she replied, "I-I'm not sure. He's -- quiet. I think he might be -- unconscious."

Tara frowned, worried. "I hate to leave him there," she said softly. "Even for a minute longer. But -- if she catches us...and if we wait just a little while, it'll be so much safer..."

Dawn was silent, worried as well, but content to leave the difficult decision to the actual adult this time.

"Let me hear that tape," Tara decided softly, going to the couch to sit down, Dawn following at her side. Once they were seated, Tara pressed the rewind button, waited, and then pressed play.

As the brutal scene played out in Dawn's ears for the second time that night, fresh tears streaming down her face, Tara's expression gradually became more and more dark and troubled. Her eyes narrowed with anger at Buffy's cruelty, welling with tears at Spike's suffering -- but toward the end of the encounter, her frown took on a puzzled, thoughtful element.

"Why does she want him to open his mouth?" she murmured, shaking her head in confusion, listening as the conversation went on.

*Please, Spike!* Buffy laughed cruelly on the tape. *I've tried that trick with a vamp before -- instant dustage. And I am *sooo* not through with you yet!*

"What trick?" Tara's soft voice, barely over a whisper, was increasingly frustrated, increasingly impatient, her foot tapping rapidly against the floor an indication of her edgy nerves. "What did she do to him?"

Her eyes widened with horror, and dawning realization, as she listened to Buffy tell Spike he had to be punished, heard his anguished moan of pain, and her footsteps on the stairs, just before the tape fell into silence.

Wide-eyed, Tara looked up at Dawn in startled alarm. "Dawnie," she whispered in horror. "Whatever she did to him -- it was hurting him...*after she left*...did you hear that?"

"Oh my God," Dawn whispered, staring down at the now-silent tape recorder in stunned comprehension. She looked back up at Tara, fear in her eyes. "Tara, we have to get him out of there *now*!"

"We'll just have to be quiet," Tara stated without hesitation, tossing the tape recorder down on the couch and rising to her feet. "We can't just leave him there to suffer."

Dawn followed Tara quickly as she grabbed her jacket and rushed toward the door. "What if she goes down to check on him in the morning? How are we gonna have a plan in place that quickly? Can we even get a hold of everybody this late?"

Tara stopped in the doorway, frowning as she glanced thoughtfully back to the discarded tape recorder. "Probably not," she admitted grimly.

After a moment of silence passed between them, Dawn shook her head, at a loss. "Tara -- what are you thinking?"

Quickly, Tara strode across the room, picking up the tape recorder and putting it in her pocket. "I'm thinking road trip," she muttered her response as she stalked out the door and down the hallway, leaving a stunned Dawn momentarily standing there trying to comprehend her words, and then rushing after her to catch up.

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

By now, all Spike was aware of was pain.

The holy water Buffy had poured into the rag in his mouth was not very much, and there were large parts of the rag that were not even damp. But there were other parts of it, parts that had been in contact with the sensitive interior of his mouth for hours now -- and he could no longer be conscious of anything else but the searing agony as the deadly fluid ate into his tender flesh.

He could not hold back the feverish, agonized moans that escaped his lips; the part of his mind that had warned him to keep silence, not to risk further angering Buffy, if she happened to be within hearing range, had long since been overwhelmed by his pain. Fortunately, the gag in his mouth kept his panicked cries of pain from being loud enough to really be heard outside the basement, let alone by Buffy in her bedroom upstairs.

His wrists were chafed and bleeding from his instinctive, unconscious struggles against the iron bonds that held them. He knew from past experience that he would not be able to break them, but in his mindless desperation, his body continued to try, continued to attempt to find a way to wrench the tormenting fabric from his bound mouth.

A soft thumping sound from upstairs suddenly drew his attention, pulling him partially out of his agony, and into a sense of terror. He forced himself to fall silent, his blinded eyes struggling to open, to see her before she reached him -- because it had to be her, didn't it? No one else would be moving about near the basement door so late at night.

A second soft thump followed the first, and now he could hear hushed whispers from upstairs, could see a faint light through the gaps at the top and bottom of the belt over his eyes.

And then -- footsteps on the stairs.

Two sets.

Neither of them hers.

He froze completely, his mind racing with panic. In his pain-induced haze of confusion, he could not recognize who was approaching him, only knew that somehow, someone had found him -- but they could not help him. He knew that much for sure.

And when she found out that someone knew -- she would kill him.

First, she would punish him, torture him -- and then, she would kill him.

"Oh...oh my God...no...Spike, no..."

That voice, Spike recognized.

He froze, his heart sinking with dread and despair. Dawn would want to help him, of course she would, the girl was as sweet and loving to him as anyone had been in a hundred years or more -- but she couldn't. He didn't know how she had managed to find him, how she had even managed to get in, as he had heard Buffy lock the basement door behind her.

All he knew was that if Buffy found out that she knew about what she was doing -- she would kill the girl to protect her secret.

*Dawn,* he cried out in his mind, moaning against the gag in his mouth though he could not speak the words aloud. *Bit, please, *please* go...get out of here, before...*

"Oh, Spike...oh my poor Spike..."

Suddenly, he felt his body begin to shake, as the sweet tears of sympathy in that second familiar voice, the aching compassion he heard there, went to work on his battered, love-starved heart. He fought to keep back his tears, ashamed that she should see him like this, after all she had done to try to help him -- and how he had rejected that help.

Why had he ever rejected it?

He *had* rejected it -- hadn't he?

He couldn't even remember anymore.

When her warm hands touched his shoulders gently, cautiously, he felt his shaking intensify, as his tears overwhelmed him, flowing down from under the belt across his eyes, soaking his trembling lips as she reached behind his head to unfasten the belt.

She removed it carefully, and he kept his eyes closed for a moment in shame and uncertainty, as he heard a soft hiss through her teeth, as she got her first glimpse of his seared, scarred lips, burned by the holy water-soaked rag that even now, he did not dare to spit out.

Gently, Tara gripped it and tugged carefully, wincing when he let out a soft, pleading cry of pain, as the rag was torn from the flesh it had melded to, and he tasted his own blood mingling with the sickening charred flavor in his mouth.

"What did she do to you?" Tara whispered, and he felt her gentle hands on his face, one hand running around behind to cup the back of his head, as her very tenderness and compassion made his tears flow harder.

While she had freed him from the horror of the gag, Dawn had been working on the chains at his wrists, and after a moment he felt his tight, aching arms go slack, falling numbly to his sides -- and he would have collapsed to the floor with them, had Tara not gently caught him, her arms around him holding him close, and cradling him to her as she went down to her knees beside him.

His body gave way to violent, convulsive shudders, as his hands blindly clutched at her sides, and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer and cradling his head against her chest.

"Shhh," she whispered soothingly, placing a tender kiss on the top of his head. "It's all right -- it's gonna be all right, Sweetheart...we're gonna get you out of here..."

Her words drew deep, wrenching sobs from his chest, though he could not tell whether from hope and relief, or from the deep terror within him, that quiet, insistent voice that kept telling him that there was no way he could ever escape *her*. They had to leave him, had to get out of this place, or she would come back, and kill them both with him.

He tried to tell her, tried to warn her, but found that his tongue, his mouth, was too badly mangled by the burns of the holy water for him to form the words. They came out instead as an anguished, desperate moan of agony and despair, as he clung to her, sobbing against her breast.

"Shhh," she urged him again, her voice full of understanding and compassion, yet firm and with a slight air of command -- and he fell silent, trained to obedience by months of abusive conditioning. "Shh, can't let her hear you, Sweetheart..."

He could smell the salt of Tara's own tears, as she gently helped him to his feet, carefully checking to be sure that he could walk on his own -- and he could, with the help of the girls. Starvation and Buffy's brutal beating earlier that evening had left him battered and limping, and bowed down under a weight of shame and fear and confusion.

Broken and ashamed and simply overwhelmed by the suddenness of what was happening, Spike couldn't even bring himself to meet either girl's eyes, simply allowing himself to be gently led, as they hurried to prepare to make their escape.

"Come on," Tara said softly once she was sure they were ready. "Let's get out of here."