White Magic

Spike awakened suddenly in the dimly lit bedroom he had been sharing with Tara. The first feeling he was aware of was one of restriction, and he tried to jerk away from the firm grip of the person holding onto him, panicked and frantic with fear, his mind too confused and disoriented to process who it was that was holding him.

But Tara was ready for just such a reaction.

"You're safe," she assured him. "You're safe, Spike, it's just me...you're just right here with me, and it's okay..."

The sound of her voice was enough to calm him somewhat, and Spike ceased his efforts to escape her, rather sinking gratefully into her embrace, his arms clasping her tighter to him while his head lowered to rest against her breast. Tara's soft fingertips played through the hair on the side of his head, whispering soothing sounds in his ear as she cradled him close, though her eyes were raised to meet those of the other two in the room with them, seated near the bed.

Wesley's expression was one of schooled composure, no doubt a response learned long ago as the only one appropriate for moments so flooded with intense emotion.  His lips formed a tight line, his eyes carefully averted, as he sat there in silence, but Tara could see a blazing light of righteous fury and indignation in his eyes, and knew that it was more than just dismay at seeing the depths of depravity to which the current Chosen One had fallen.

Willow was sobbing softly, her hands raised to cover her face. She had understandably had a difficult time accepting that her best friend of so many years could be capable of the kind of cruelty Tara and Spike accused her of committing; but now, she had seen it with her own eyes, had tasted the horror Buffy had inflicted on Spike for so long.

It was more than she could bear.

Tara's eyes softened with compassion on the quietly weeping girl she had once loved more than anything. She wished there had been another way to protect Spike from Buffy's mental attacks, but the spell to join her dreams with Spike's had required more magical power than she possessed. Unfortunately, it had also required Spike and Tara to be asleep, allowing Buffy the opportunity to slip in while Willow and Wesley were still there to see it.

Without a word to draw attention to the redhead's reaction, Tara reached out a gentle hand to rest on the girl's knee in a gesture of simple comfort. Willow lowered her hands, shocked eyes locking onto Tara's, her head shaking slowly in stricken grief.

"How..." Willow whispered. "How could she...?"

Spike looked up sharply at her hoarse whisper, as if just remembering that he and Tara were not alone in the room. He swallowed hard, turning his head away in shame, his eyes tightly closed as if to shut the world away.

"I don't know," Tara whispered in response to Willow's words, though she frowned with concern, her eyes focused on Spike as her hand cupped the back of his head protectively. "I don't know what exactly is wrong with her, Willow - but I don't think she's *our* Buffy, you know? I think...I think whenever she came back...she came back..."

"Wrong," Willow finished, her eyes widening with horrified understanding at last. "I did this. Tara, I did this!"

Tara was silent, not having any words of consolation to offer her former lover. After all, Willow was right. If she had not brought Buffy back, none of this would have been happening to them at all. There was really nothing she could say to make it better for Willow.

And besides - Willow was not really her focus at the moment, anyway.

She could feel the shame rolling off the vampire in waves, as he hid his face, struggling to stifle the sobs that rose in his throat, because of the presence of the others in the room. She tried to pull back, only to find that Spike refused to allow it, moving with her so that his face remained concealed.

Over his head, Tara's eyes met Wesley's, and the perceptive Watcher immediately understood. He stood, placing a gentle hand on Willow's shoulder and speaking in a soft, sobered voice.

"Come along, Willow. Let's leave them be for now, shall we?"

The little redhead looked up at him in confusion for a moment, her eyes glistening with tears, but after a moment she seemed to get it, and rose with a hurried nod. "Okay. Yeah," she replied, sniffling quietly as she ran the back of her hand across her eyes in a useless attempt to mask her emotions. "We'll...we'll be downstairs, okay?"

Tara nodded silently, giving her what she hoped was an encouraging smile, as Willow and Wesley headed for the bedroom door, closing it gently behind them. It was barely shut before Spike raised his head just enough to whisper brokenly, his cool breath a soft caress against Tara's skin.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry, love..."

"Shhh," Tara soothed him, shaking her head as she gently tilted his chin up so that he was facing her at last. "Spike...you have nothing to be sorry about. You were *wonderful* in there...don't you see that?"

Tara searched his expression for a long moment, her eyes finally widening in disbelief. "You don't, do you?" she concluded. "Spike...the way you stood up to her...the way you demanded what you needed from her..."

"Yeah," Spike sniffed tearfully, lowering his head again with a quiet little huff of self-mocking laughter. "Got it, too, didn't I? Except for the bit where I *didn't*! And in the end, she still got the last word in, didn't she? Still managed to make me feel like so much rubbish under her shoes."

Tara was quiet, carefully weighing her next words before she spoke them. When she finally did respond, her voice was gentle, full of a compassion and tenderness that Spike desperately needed.

"I'm so incredibly proud of you for confronting her, Spike. For...for standing up to her and demanding the answers you need." Tara paused, drawing in a deep breath before continuing, "But you'll never get them. Not from her."

Spike looked up sharply, surprised by her blunt words.

Tara's grey eyes were full of understanding as she unflinchingly met his questioning gaze, sorrow in her voice as she explained, "She'll never give you that, Spike. The girl who might have been able to, once...well, she wouldn't have done these things to you in the first place."

Spike let out a heavy sigh, nodding as he lowered his head. "I know," he admitted in a small, uncertain voice, barely over a whisper.

Tara's hand ran soothingly through his hair as a few moments of thoughtful silence passed between them. Finally, she went on, her voice hushed and even and calming in the stillness that surrounded them.

"For the last two years, Spike...Buffy has defined your self-worth. You've looked at her opinion of you, and drawn your judgments of yourself from that. And you know...before, that might not have been so terrible. Not at all wise," she amended with a little grimace, "but not necessarily a devastating mistake, you know? But...but now...you can't look to her to tell you who you are - what you're worth - not ever again."

Spike was very still, taking in the words that were clearly difficult for him to accept on several different levels.

"She doesn't *know* how much you're worth," Tara went on, her hand sliding down to cup his cheek, gently raising his face toward hers to meet her warm, affectionate smile. "She doesn't appreciate you...and she's made it her goal to make you feel like...what was it? So much rubbish beneath her feet? She *wants* to make you feel that way...and if you let her, she will." She waited a moment before stating firmly, "You can't let her, Spike."

"I...I don't know how to *stop* her..." Spike confessed in an anguished whisper, tears sliding down his face again, his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.

"You stop looking to her for what you need," Tara supplied the answer without hesitation.

Spike shook his head as he looked up at her again, clearly bewildered by the idea. "How?"

"You start looking for it somewhere else."

Tara's encouraging smile seemed to swallow up the world around Spike, until he could be aware of nothing else but the brightness of her love in her eyes, the tenderness of her touch on his trembling arms. He drank in the affection on her face, his hands instinctively pulling her closer to him, his eyes fastened onto hers, unable to look away as he whispered a final breathless question.

"Where?"

Tara gave him an indulgent wink, her hands on his arms squeezing gently as she softly countered, "You know where. All the strength - all the confidence - everything you need - you know right where you can find it?"

She paused for effect, before opening her mouth to answer her own rhetorical question with the single word she intended to say.

*Yourself*.

But before the word could leave her lips, Spike had answered the question, gazing into her eyes with clear adoration.

"In you."

Tara's eyes went wide, startled at the almost fierce devotion she heard in his hushed, awed voice, the passionate love and gratitude in his intent gaze. As she lay there, stunned to stillness, she saw the tentative question in Spike's eyes, as his tongue darted out to anxiously lick his trembling lips, and he leaned in hesitantly toward her.

She was too startled to even think of pulling away - not that she really wanted to, anyway - and Spike took that as permission, closing the distance between them and softly, reverently brushing his lips against hers in a kiss that was ironically chaste, coming from a vampire.

But as Tara had long been aware...Spike was no ordinary vampire.

Despite the barely-there contact of the kiss, Tara felt sparks of tingly electricity where his lips touched hers, shooting down through her and setting her entire body aflame with a desire she was trying hard to suppress.

And when Spike looked up at her again, a searching, pleading vulnerability in his eyes, begging her to throw her reserve away and give in with him to the desire he shared...well, it was all she could do to continue to think first of what he *needed* from her, rather than what they both were beginning to want so badly.

And it was certainly not going to help the situation, she realized ruefully, that the spell that would protect Spike from Buffy's attacks in his dreams required Tara and Spike to be sleeping at the same time, and together.

She forced a brave smile to her face, meeting his eyes, aware that any sign of awkwardness or discomfort now would be more than the damaged vampire could take, and would only serve to reinforce his false ideas of his own worthlessness and undesirability.

Slowly, deliberately, she leaned in to return the kiss, holding contact for only a few moments before pulling back again. "I love you, Spike," she whispered, adding after a moment, "No hurry. We have all the time in the world, Sweetheart."

Spike seemed reassured by those words, nodding his acceptance and relaxing into her arms for a few moments longer, completely unaware of the troubled expression on Tara's face as she stared into space over his shoulder.

*Everything he needs...in *me*?* A sick sensation settled in the pit of her stomach at that thought.

 "S'pose we'd best go down and let them all know we survived the spell, yeah?"

Tara's initial impulse was to remind him that Willow and Wesley would already have done that, but she suppressed it, choosing instead to take advantage of the opportunity his words afforded her to escape a situation which could swiftly spin out of both their control, if they were not careful.

*Public place,* she thought urgently. *Now.*

"Yeah," she agreed with a nod. "We'd better go on down."

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

With a desperate gasp for air, as if just coming up from a long period underwater, Buffy sat up straight in bed, her eyes wide and panicked, her heart pounding madly. Wild-eyed, she looked around the darkened hotel room, disoriented and unsure of where she was at first.

Then, everything began to come back to her.

The others had left her, running off to Angel at the first sign of trouble, abandoning her to handle the task of getting Spike back all on her own.

It was actually kind of a relief.

Buffy frowned as she took in the candles she had lit for the ritual that would allow her to infiltrate Spike's dreams. They had burned down nearly to nothing, dripping wax stalactites falling down from them, across the nightstands on which she had placed them. Her spellbook lay open on the bed beside her, open to the ritual that should have brought Spike that much closer to surrendering and coming back to her on his own.

Should have.

"Meddling witch," Buffy muttered under her breath, throwing back her blankets and rising from the bed. "I'll kill her. I'll kill all of them...except Spike. He doesn't get the luxury of death until I'm good and done with him, and that won't be for a *very* long time!"

The more she talked and paced the floor, thinking about how she had been thwarted by the unexpected counter-spell Tara had devised, the more furious Buffy became. She was not accustomed to losing, and especially not to someone she had believed to be so thoroughly under her control as Spike.

A white hot rage consumed her as she thought of the tentatively confident words Spike had spoken in the dreamscape in which she had been trapped - words he would never have dared to speak to her before Tara had become involved in what did not concern her.

"This has gone far enough," she declared to no one but herself as she opened her suitcase and through some clothes out on the bed. "That's it. It's over. I'm so getting that stupid sanctuary spell down, no matter what I have to do to do it, and then they're all going to pay for making a fool out of me!"

She dressed quickly in a dark, tight-fitting top and a short, black leather skirt, arming herself with a few carefully chosen weapons, both standard Slayer issue and magical, before heading out the hotel room door and into the night. She had business in a darker, more dangerous area of L.A. where any other tiny, pretty blonde would have been insane to venture.

Any tiny, pretty blonde who was not also a vampire slayer, that is.

"You're mine, Spike," she muttered, her voice trembling with a dark, ominous anger. "And when I get through, you're *never* going to forget it again!"