A/N: I do want to say, before you read this chapter, that the things that happen in it will be explained later, especially the last bit. Also, no - this story is not Buffy/Spike.

Buffy leaned against the doorframe, staring out the front door of the house into the early evening twilight. She should be going out - on patrol, looking for vampires and demons to kill - but she didn’t move.

She just stood there, letting memories - both welcome and unwelcome - wash over her.

Remembering the fight at the school, and her victory - remembering a starving vampire in a bathtub, and feeling victorious even though she’d nothing to do with it - remembering when he learned he could fight demons, the glee on his face that made something go jelly-like and unsettled in her stomach - remembering the time Glory took him, and how he looked when he came back, and how she had felt victorious, somewhere deep, deep down; they had collared this vampire so well that he wouldn’t even betray them, ignoring the fact that it was his victory and not hers - remembering when she came back; how much Dawn loved him and how jealous she had been; that had been his victory, too - remembering the darkness she’d felt, the clawing despair and how she’d clawed into him to soothe it, feed it, fight it.

She didn’t know whose victory that was.

She thought that, perhaps, it had belonged to neither of them.

Remembering how he came back - with a soul - and not one cursed on to him, not one he’d ever lose - remembering how angry she had been, because why him and not Angel? - remembering how he’d finally seemed to be getting better, to be helping -

- and then he was gone.

"What are you doing?" a voice startled her, and she jerked around to see Dawn - so thin, so pale, her poor baby sister. "I thought you were gone by now."

"I was just thinking," she said softly, and didn’t say who she was thinking about. Dawn didn’t need to hear that name. Buffy couldn’t handle another bout of wailing grief or furious anger. Dawn confused her; everyone else was sure that Spike had just given up and gone away, but Dawn was certain that he was dead - dust.

She never explained why.

She just swung back and forth between wailing over it, weeping like her heart was broken, and shouting that he deserved to die, almost begging the people around her to agree with her.

"You’re thinking about him," Dawn said accusingly, stepping past her onto the porch and staring at the post that Spike had been leaning against the last time Buffy saw him.

"Are you pretending to be psychic now?" Buffy tried to tease her, "how would you know what I’m thinking about? And who is ‘him’? There are lots of ‘hims’ around here; you’ll have to be more specific."

"You’re thinking about that vampire," Dawn spat. Apparently she was in her ‘Spike is dead and deserved to die’ mood. "The one that tried to rape you, remember?"

"Dawn," Buffy sighed, realizing that she was going to have to confess a few things to her sister, before this got even more out of hand - and anyway, her sister was old enough to handle it now, "there’s more to it than just that."

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Dawn gave her a narrow-eyed, suspicious look.

"It means that he didn’t just come out of nowhere and... and do that," she said, moving to sit on the porch steps. She stared at the empty street so she wouldn’t have to watch her sister’s face. "There - there was history behind what happened that night."

"Tell me," Dawn ordered, sounding strangely hoarse.

So Buffy did just that, speaking slowly as she dredged up those dark days, when she’d felt so empty, so desperate, and Spike was the only one who could make those feelings go away - at least for awhile. She spoke of how they had fought together, fucked together, how she had turned down any gentleness he’d offered, only wanting the hard press of his hands, whether they were doubled into fists or stroking her.

For the first time, sitting there in the dull twilight, she didn’t try to sugar coat any of it. She didn’t try to make excuses for herself, and she didn’t try to put all the blame on Spike. Neither of them were innocent, she felt, so she just told the facts. How often he’d told her he loved her, how the sex always started out as a fight, with one of them being restrained, how she’d nearly beaten him to death - left him for dead - when she thought she’d killed that girl.

Dawn was silent behind her, so it was easy to talk - it was almost like she was whispering the ugly words to herself, not telling all this to someone who might judge her.

She talked about how she felt when in the bathroom, that night - how she had been frightened, but not surprised, how she had been surprised when he didn’t finish what he started. She talked about how she felt when he came back with a soul, a soul he’d earned for her, and how she’d refused that amazing gift, and she -

- and she stopped talking, because Dawn started to scream.

"I put a sleep spell on her," Willow sighed, flopping down into a chair, "she just wouldn’t calm down."

"That’s probably the best thing you could have done," Xander mumbled as he went by, "I never heard anybody get so hysterical. Not even when they’d seen a vamp for the first time."

"She won’t wake up until morning," Willow told Buffy, "so you can go ahead and patrol. I think tomorrow, we should all sit down and talk this over, ‘cause she’s going to need some kind of help to get over this, even though it wasn’t exactly her fault. She thinks it is, though, so we’ll have to..."

Buffy let Willow’s chatter fade out of her hearing, as she sat upright on the couch, staring straight ahead.

When Spike had left, she’d been angry, then hurt, then depressed as she realized how much help he had been and how much she depended on him.

Deep down, though, she hadn’t been worried. Spike had never left her, no matter what she had dished out, so she knew that sooner or later, he’d show up again.

She had really expected him every day; expected to see him stroll through the door with some flimsy excuse or even no excuse at all. She’d looked forward to socking him a good one and then dragging him out to help fight the demon of the evening.

Now she felt like the foundation of her world had been ripped away.

Spike was gone.

Spike was never coming back.

Spike was dead.

Dawn had killed him.