Summary: Spike returns to Sunnydale after a long absence, very uncertain about what he will find there, or the reception he will get - especially since he himself has changed on a fundamental level.

Disclaimer & Notes: See Chapter One.
 
 

Chapter Nine

Something didn't add up. It was all there in black and white - the day's takings on the one side, the day's sales on the other - technically the same thing, but the numbers danced before her eyes and eluded her. Every time she recalculated the sum of each column, she came up with something different. The problem was, now she was tired. It was late - she didn't know how late - and her eyes were red with rubbing and staring too long at the monitor.

She should go home, get some sleep before it all started again the next day, but she couldn't let it lie. Everything had to be perfect before she could rest easy.

The bell at the front door tinkled and she waved her hand annoyingly. "Store's closed. Can't you read the sign?" She squinted at her screen, wondering which amount had been inputted wrong. She'd have to fire that lousy excuse for a shop assistant and that would be the third one in two months.
 

"Hello, Anyanka," a gravelly voice called from the shadows in the entrance and she looked up.

"You!" She gasped. Rising from her seat, all thoughts of the daily figures gone, she glared at the shape of the person in her doorway. "Get out!"

"No," he said and she could hear the edge to his voice. "Not until you tell me what I want to know."

Her hands shook. "What on earth made you think you could just walk back in here? None of us want you here. You messed up my life. You messed up Buffy's life--"

Spike walked into the half light. It wasn't his usual cocky swagger, she noted. Instead, he seemed somehow defeated. He even looked different in the fluorescent glare and his hair was showing serious roots. "What happened between me an' her is none of your bleeding business. And if you want to get nasty, then I would say you helped a great deal in fucking your own life up."

"You have no right to say things like that!" Her bottom lip began to tremble.

He stalked roughly past her, then came to a halt. "Bloody hell, woman, you're a sodding vengeance demon." He stared her down with glittering eyes, daring her to counter him. Instead, she fingered the amulet that hung on the chain around her neck.

"I'm not practicing, anymore," she blurted out.

His eyebrows raised and he quizzed her with his expression. "Oh? Then what's with the ol' ball an' chain? In case you ever get a sudden yearning to grant a wish? You know, one that suits your purposes?"

She couldn't look him in the eye. How funny it was that she felt guilty about abusing him, of all people. A soulless demon. Well, she might be a demon, but she at least she had a soul. That must be why she had a conscience attack. "Look, I'm sorry I came between you and your beloved Buffy. But I didn't even know you guys had a-- a 'thing' at the time! And don't tell me you didn't want to hurt her as much as I wanted to hurt Xander. After what she did to you..."

His hand grabbed her neck before she could react and he propelled her to the counter. Her eyes bulged as she fought for needed air. He had her bent backwards over the counter, one hand constricting her throat, the other pinning her arms while his body held her there. Leaning in close, she saw a gleaming rage in his eyes. "I will never, ever want to hurt her," he breathed and she felt the hot air against her cheek. "I love her - and you don't know the meaning of the word. Do you understand?"

She was too distracted with her own thumping heart and strangled breath to notice how warm he was, or how a vein had distended by his right eye. "Yes," she gasped, genuinely afraid for her life. He was strong - could snap her neck like a normal man would snap a thin branch. "Spike," she pleaded. "Can't... breathe..."

He released her with inconsistent gentleness and walked away.

Anya drew in large gulps of air before she eased herself off the counter, rubbing her throat. He stared at her, his eye twitching and his mouth a grim line. "I'm not here to play sodding games. I want you to tell me - what happened to Buffy? While I was gone, what happened to her?"

She put her hand out to ward him off, not that it would make any difference. "Just calm down, okay? I'll tell you everything, but calm down. Why don't you have a seat or something? I'll make some tea, like I used to do for Giles. Oh, wait, you would probably want blood," she was babbling a bit, she knew it, but he didn't seem to want to kill her for now. "We don't keep it - not since, you know, after you left. But I could go to Willy's. I'm sure he'd have some." She edged around the counter and felt for her keys. "It would only take a minute. Down the road and back. You just wait right there and I'll be back before you know it. With blood. Because that's what you drink--"

"Sit down, Anya."

"What? Oh..." Deflated, she walked over to the table and flopped into a chair. She wasn't going to get away from him that easily.

"Now, start talking."

***

Dawn hated hospitals. This irrational fear wasn't one that had been implanted in her psyche by the monks when they'd turned her from key energy into human girl, but was something borne out of her trials during the whole Glory thing. In some ways, it showed her that she was real, just like loving Spike had done. These things had happened because she was herself: Dawn Summers, teenager and sister, not some mystical key that opened the gates of hell.

Now, two of the things that made her 'real' collided. Buffy was in hospital. Spike was back.

And Spike was the one that had sent her sister here.

"She's going to be all right," the paramedic had said as they loaded Buffy's prone body into the ambulance. "The damage looks to be on the surface, but we can't take a chance - we have to take her in for tests."

There was all that blood, gushing in sheets down Buffy's face while she was unconscious. It hadn't looked all right to Dawn at all.

She sniffed a little and curled up further in the uncomfortable chair in the hospital waiting lounge. Her eyes were puffy and red from trying not to cry.

Giles stopped his incessant pacing and looked at her wide, fragile eyes. "I'm terribly sorry, Dawn. She's going to be fine. Really, she is."

"I know," she swallowed. "I just hate the waiting."

He smiled a little at her with genuine affection. "God, so do I. What a snivelling pair we make, don't we? Who would have thought we faced down a hell goddess together, eh?"

This brought an uneasy smile to her lips. "Look, Giles... I wanted to say - I'm sorry."

He cocked his head to the side. "Whatever for?"

"You were right. I am selfish. I don't want to leave. But... It's not safe here for her. I think Spike's got his chip out - that's why he left and now that he's back... I don't want to believe that he would ever hurt her. But this is just like Angelus all over again, isn't it?"

Giles nodded, his face grim. "I'm afraid so, Dawn." He removed his glasses and rubbed his temple with a thumb. Then he looked at her frankly. "Can I be honest with you? I think, I was hoping - like you were - that Spike would somehow find it in himself to be reformed. Oh, I know, it goes against everything the Watchers' Council has said for centuries, but they never got to watch a vampire up close like I did. William the Bloody's transformation was nothing short of miraculous. It made me wonder if it was more than just the implant. If somehow his love for Buffy would be enough to restrain him - could act for him as a conscience would, or a soul, for want of a better word. For a while, I really believed that it could."

Dawn moved off her chair, and startling the older man, hugged her arms around him and cried silently into his jacket. "It's not fair. It's not fair."

With halting movements, he reached up and patted her head. "Reality is a brutal thing."

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. She realised that she was crying more for Spike, than for her sister. "Giles, there's no such thing as 'happy ever after', is there?"

"All evidence points to the contrary, my dear. I'm sorry, as well."

***

Spike wasn't sure what to do with his hands. He'd listened with more patience than he'd had since Dru, even, as Anya, in her own inconveniently circular way, listed each of the events that had occurred since he'd left.

Buffy was shot. Severe trauma to her spine. So was Tara - she wasn't quite so lucky.

But he'd known about Tara, hadn't he?

Willow, sweet Willow, had become hell bent on avenging the death of her lover - had made Anya finally realise why D'hoffryn saw such potential in the girl. She'd gone after the culprit, one of the geeks apparently and his death was fast - but infinitely painful. Once she had started down that slope, she could not stop her descent. And once the dark magic began to eat away at her from the inside out, it seemed that there was nothing big enough to balance out the wrong that had been done. She was on the verge of taking the world with her, but Xander got to her in time.

It was Anya and Giles, who had returned in a hurry at the news of Buffy's injury, who devised the plan to block the source of her power, but it was Xander who had finally made her see there was something worth living for. When Willow stopped, however, she was completely broken.

That girl couldn't perform again even if she wanted to. She was hardly more than a drooling idiot, and, of course, Xander decided that she was to be his responsibility. Anya hadn't seen either of them since.

Neither had Buffy. Buffy wasn't there to save her friend. She took a long time recovering from her injuries but she was still deeply effected by the emotional scars. Anya saw her and Giles from time to time, but neither of them wanted anything to do with running the Magic Shop - so the onus had been on her to her to keep it from closing down. In a nutshell, it seemed as if the Scoobies had fallen apart in the worst possible way.

"Why did you leave?" Anya asked Spike while he was still trying to come to terms with the events she had told him about. "Was it because of what happened between us?"

He gazed blankly at his hands, then reached up to touch the blood that was smeared across his forehead. Eventually, he said, "I lied." He looked up at the woman and she gasped at his haunted expression. "When I said I would never hurt her... I did. I tried to-- wanted her to see me so much that I lost sight of her. The only reason I stopped was because she made me. I have no soul - she's my conscience, Buffy. I realised that. And she couldn't trust me if she couldn't trust herself. I left because one way or another, I had to stop relying on her because in the end, it wouldn't be enough. I'd end up killing her just the same. I needed this--" he tapped his scull, "out and I needed this--" he tapped his heart, "to be the only reason I was who I was."

Anya sat back, a little nervous. "Why are you back? Did you find what you wanted? Is the chip gone?"

Spike laughed, but it was hard and cynical. "The chip is useless. You could say I'm a new man. But, no, I found nothing in the end. No sodding revelation except for one thing - I haven't changed."

TBC...

A/N: Yes, I'm back from holiday, so I should get back to regular posting of chapters. Just to note that this chapter and several of the subsequent (as yet unproofed) ones were written before I had seen the episodes from Normal Again onwards. I have seen them now. My, my...