6: Dire Scenarios

As though the brrring! of the weapons chest phone were a starting gun, Dawn whirled on the stairs. Racing back up to her room, she dove onto her bed, grabbed her cellphone from the bedside table, and hit the #2 speed dial. It rang! The phone was working!

After only twenty rings, she got Mike's voice slurring, "Ya."

"Hi! Phones are working again! Severely tremendous!"

If it'd been Spike, she'd have been chewed out for waking him up to pass along such cataclysmic news. But it was Mike. She heard him stirring around for a moment, maybe yawning, changing hands on his phone. She couldn't imagine it perfectly, she'd never been to his new lair, but she heard the smile in his voice and that was all she really needed. "Dawn. Everything there all right?"

"Now that the power's back, yeah." Happily, she settled into chat mode. "You do a sweep last night?"

"Something like."

"Tell me!"

"Well, nothing much stirring. Saw Spike pass by, 'bout ninety miles an hour, Slayer at pillion, dunno what that was about, if anything. Everything else all dark. There's been a lair forming up in Shady Grove, couple of vamps turning everything they could find, about half a dozen fledges. We busted them up, killed most, scattered the rest."

"Ahuh." Dawn knew, on a mental map, that particular cemetery was within Mike's claimed territory. Naturally he was going to roust anything but a lone vamp or two settling in there without paying their respects, acknowledging his rights over them, getting his permission to hunt on his ground. "Any losses?"

"Nobody you'd know. Hunted Mercy General afterward. Hospitals, they have generators."

And would therefore have people out and abroad in something like normal numbers. Dawn understood that too.

Mike didn't make any big detailed thing out of his hunts, but he didn't avoid mentioning them, either. Hunting and killing were part of what he was, and although he kept to Dawn's limits on nights when he came to visit, the rest of the time he attended to vamp priorities and made casually sure she knew it. So she'd appreciate properly what an exception she was, she thought: what allowances he was prepared to make for her. Kind of a compliment, if she wanted to look at it that way.

Some parts of vamp thinking, she could puzzle out pretty well. Some parts, she couldn't.

She found herself saying, "So how's Sue?"

"Still here. Not dusted, if that's what you mean. Sue, she looks out for herself pretty good. May last out a year yet. Didn't know you had a particular interest in her--"

"I don't!"

"--to ask after her." A silence then as he absorbed her protest. "Dawn, why'd you call?"

Dawn shrugged uncomfortably. "I figured it was my turn. Since the phones had been out...."

"No: really."

Dawn curled up tighter around the phone. "Are you mad at me?"

"What for?" Mike didn't sound surprised or even puzzled. Only curious.

"I dunno. For anything."

"For not being Sue, you mean."

"Maybe. No!"

"You're like Spike," Mike commented thoughtfully. "What you don't want, you still want the ordering of."

"No! That's nothing to me, I don't care about that!"

"And you're near as terrible a liar," Mike responded, chuckling.

"I am not lying!" Dawn screeched. It was insupportable that Mike could be so untroubled by what tied her into knots.

"Now, Dawn, don't you get mad about it when I'm not. You set the limits, not me. And there's got to be limits. On account of what you are. And I am. No use to complain about that. Just how it is. Always been limits and always will be. Just a matter of where we draw the line. Just 'cause you ain't got all of me don't mean there's anyone I set higher or think more of. Nobody's got all of anybody, Dawn...except you take the life that's theirs and make it all your own. I got no problem with that. Not what I thought you wanted, though...."

"I don't know what I want!" Dawn wailed.

"Well, I knew that, too. Not impatient about it, though. I got time. How about I swing by this evening, we take a ride. Phone's all fine, call you anytime I please, and that's good. But can't see you. Can't smell you. Can't know for certain if your eyes are all sparky or crunched up tight, or if your blood moves calm or fast. Don't really like the phone all that much, sometimes," Mike finished, moody and a little wistful.

At least he'd quit being reasonable. She couldn't stand his being reasonable. Dawn thought she'd feel so much better if he was as confused and miserable as she was.

"Come over," she agreed, then suddenly realized she had news to impart and sprang upright. "Oz is here! Do you know Oz?'

"Heard Spike speak of him," Mike responded neutrally. "Werewolf?"

"Ahuh, yes. And Giles, he's practically camped on the doorstep. He wants us all to go to Quor'toth!"

"What's that, when it's at home? Some dimensional thing?" Mike's tone was way short of pleased.

"Something like that. To rescue Ethan Rayne, of all people! And there's this thing called Fudo, about eighteen feet high, a kind of Ninja-samurai-demigod thing with a disappearing sword, that doesn't want us to, and--"

Dawn was amazed to realize the scope and detail of recent developments Mike was ignorant of, that she hadn't told him about. All kinds of excitement!

As she started to explain about Fudo, and how she'd actually been allowed to sit in on a full-scale Scooby meeting, she noticed Spike standing in her doorway. Breaking off, she tilted her head inquiringly, explaining into the phone, "It's just Spike."

Noticed, Spike stalked forward. Batting the phone out of her hand, he seized her wrist and pulled...her out of herself.

Suspended in the pearlescent occluded daylight of a Sunnydale winter morning, Spike was like a fiery cloud. The sparkling motes of his astral body whirled so wildly that he seemed to be flying apart, nearly transparent. Dawn could see through him but not into him. He was exploding like a swarm of hornets.

You told, he accused.

Told what? To who?

Angel. About Quor'toth. Second the phone was working, somebody got on to Angel. He's coming.

Dawn was accustomed to the fury of Spike's demon. But the demon had been left behind. This implacable rage made Spike seem a stranger to her. It was of the spirit. Of the soul.

He was staring at her ferociously: as though to sift every molecule of her being--here, where the truth of things could not be concealed or evaded. Know you wanted to. Tried to get me to say you could.

It wasn't me! I didn't do it! Anyway, you're the one who told me, Spike. If it's this gigantic dire secret, why did you tell me about it in the first place?

Spike's attention left her, turning inward. The seething energy lurched and swayed, no longer locked on target. Dawn could no longer see his eyes. Hadn't thought it through, then. What it would mean....

Well, I didn't! Dawn was talking to herself: Spike's presence had winked out.

In that instant, she was certain that she and Spike were thinking exactly the same thing: If she hadn't told, who had?

He'd taken his explosion elsewhere.

**********

Descending the stairs an abstracted amble, Spike was thinking, If not Bit, then who?

Oz and Giles were in the hall, talking with Buffy and Willow. Noticing him first, Buffy glanced around and Giles looked up too, with a smug, sly something in his eyes and about his pursed mouth. Spike went for him in a flying dive.

The next thing he knew, he was on his back with Buffy kneeling grimly astraddle his chest and Oz weighing down his ankles. Buffy smelled scared and furious; wolf-boy smelled anxious and determined: like he might tear Spike's throat out but he wouldn't like it. From behind, Willow's voice commented, "You got to stop doing this, Spike. It's rotten for morale, and it's hard on me. I have better things to do with my spells than slap you down, every few days."

Giles' face came hazily into Spike's view. From the floor, Giles looked as tall as Fudo. With a haughty chin lift, Giles said, "I remained within the letter of your prohibition. I recall nothing said about not communicating with Angel."

The Watcher's hairsplitting didn't touch Spike's sense of betrayal. Spike was ready to go for him again as soon as Buffy let him up. Must have showed: Giles backed off, past where Spike could see, and Buffy whapped Spike and made him look at her. "You don't do that! Not to our friends!" Then she lifted her aggrieved face to Giles. "Not that I'm real pleased, either, Giles. Why bring Angel into it?"

"Now that it's certain the Powers are involved, at least consulting him is an obvious course of action since he's dealt with them far longer than any of us," Giles replied, not fazed by Buffy's displeasure either. "There is also...the problem of how to deal with Fudo. Angel may have some useful insights about that."

"We don't need him, pet," Spike told Buffy urgently. "He'll only take over the doings, you know he will, want everything his way--"

"Unlike you," Giles mentioned with reserved sarcasm, and Buffy alternated her glare between them. Then she glanced at Willow and calmed, as though that had settled something for her, and waved wolf-boy off.

She said, "Unless Angel's willing to put himself through the blanket-in-the-trunk routine, he can't start before nightfall. So maybe he's still at the Hyperion and there's time to head him off." Buffy warily let him get to his feet. Hands on her hips, she demanded, "Can I trust you out of my sight for two minutes without your going all Taz on somebody? Do I have to have Willow disinvite you, too, until you can quit behaving...well, like some insane-o fledge?"

Spike jerked a glance at the bright panels flanking the front door. "It's daylight out, love."

"And we have a handy dandy tunnel that'll take you right into the nice, dark sewers," Buffy retorted, unimpressed. "Where you can stay until you've convinced me you can behave. I'm not putting up with this, Spike--you blowing up in a vamp tantrum every time something doesn't suit you, doesn't go your way. You know better! If this is what playing on the astral side does to you, I don't think you should go there anymore. Well?"

Presented with an excuse, Spike took it. Bending to put a quick, contrite (he hoped) kiss on Buffy's forehead, Spike said, "Sorry, love. Maybe you're right. 'F the Watcher lets me alone, I'll let him alone."

"That would sound a lot better," Buffy said tartly, "if your eyes weren't yellow."

"Oh." Spike concentrated, shut the demon deeper within him. That took some effort. Seemed it was always simmering close to the surface now, taking any opportunity to flash out at somebody. Good thing he'd thought to take Bit across, accuse her there. Otherwise, he might have flashed out at her, and even he found that unacceptable. Had to get a better grip on himself, some way, to have any chance of steering the rolling disaster he felt already in motion, carrying him along toward several dire outcomes. They all couldn't happen; but deflect it from one, another worse one opened.

Things were getting past him, and he didn't know what to do about it, and the combination was driving him frantic.

Which didn't stop him putting on a smooth, non-twitchy mask for Buffy. Wasn't hard: she seldom looked past the surface. "There. That better?"

"No fighting," Buffy decreed flatly, poking a finger into his breastbone for emphasis. "Especially, no escalation. If Giles goes all toplofty on you, that's not your cue to try to rip out his ribs. We're out of your jurisdiction, Spike: we're not your crew, that you can pound on anytime you feel like it. And that goes for you and Angel, too...if I can't stop him." Worriedly, Buffy headed into the front room and sat on the weapons chest, picking up the phone there.

Spike and Giles exchanged a bland look--smug on Giles' side, evaluating on Spike's. No news to him, that nobody paid much heed to his word here. Which didn't mean he'd allow outright betrayal without payback. But that would have to wait. Buffy was right on the edge of tossing him out and Spike couldn't let that happen. Had to be here to keep things contained...including himself.

None of his usual ways of settling himself down--brawling, drinking, fucking--seemed on the current menu, unless Buffy would be willing to combine the first and last. Not likely, he thought, watching her talk into the phone. No joy there, evidently: Angel was en route, couldn't be recalled. Depending on when he'd set out, another hour, maybe, given that Angel hadn't yet been introduced to the benefits of the necro-tempered glass Oz's van was fitted out with and Spike had added afterward to the house repairs, rendering Casa Summers vamp-safe, too. That meant Spike had to keep good watch and be quick off the mark when Angel showed up. So no drinking either, not that there were enough drinkables in the house to produce more than a mild buzz....

He considered Oz a moment, then waved him nearer, into a close conversational huddle near the front door, throwing a congenial, coercive arm over wolf-boy's shoulders. "Well stocked up with liquor, are you?"

Oz regarded him quizzically. "Some," he allowed.

"Fetch it in. Gonna need it, I think."

That set going, Spike trailed after wolf-boy as far as the front porch and lit a cigarette there, blinking against the brightness. Still clouded over, though: should be all right. Too bright for his demon's comfort, not bright enough for the rest of him, that yearned after the clarity and brilliance of astral sight, wanted to kick free and soar into it, leave all the itchy muddle of halfway things behind. But he wasn't gonna do that. Not while he was smoking.

Buffy was right: he shouldn't be doing so much of that. All disrupted, dim, and edgy when he returned, even if he hadn't been gone but a minute or two. Took him an hour or more to get himself cogged back into the everyday. Couldn't afford that now. Had to keep good track of things.

Watching Oz trek to his van and return after a few minutes, toting a plastic milk crate clinking with bottles, Spike made his own fidgety circuit of the porch, lighting a fresh cig from the stub of the last and concentrating on that to hold himself in place.

Coming out of the house, Oz commented helpfully, "You should try meditating." Spike snarled. Turning, descending the steps backward, Oz said, "No, really," all earnest but with a glint in his eye. As Spike feinted at him, he skipped briskly into the diffuse sunlight, showing a tight, tucked grin, eyes downcast, as he wheeled around to return to the van.

Cheeky bastard.

Willow and Buffy came out, talking, Buffy predictably hugging herself against the outdoors chill and looking glum. She looked around to tell Spike what he already knew: Angel was in transit.

Spike drew hard on the cigarette. "Figured. However, house is all fresh-spelled, and he wasn't included in the new invite: don't have to let him in, you know."

"I know," Buffy responded unhappily. "I've been thinking about it. But I don't know...if I could look him in the face and tell him he can't come in."

"Never bothered you none with me," Spike responded, indignant.

"That's different."

"Different how?"

Coming a step nearer, Buffy wrapped arms around his neck, pulling his head down into a consoling kiss. Easing away, looking into his eyes, she said, "He was less persistent. He'd just go off and sulk. You'd look all astonished and hurt and then try to yell the house down."

"Did, a time or two." Recalling, smiling a little, Spike leaned and kissed her fast before she could get away. "Always caved and let me in eventually, though."

Smiling in reply, but her eyes shadowed and sober, Buffy said, "Spike, you can always come in. Sort of a permanent invitation. When you're not going all demento on people we really, really don't want to hurt, anyway."

"He ain't seen the half of what he's got coming," Spike grumbled.

Buffy didn't seem quite so pissed-off at him as he'd expected. He wondered about the logistics of sneaking in a quick shag while they waited. Settle him down right nice, that would. And her, too, she was all on edge....

But no. Get lost in it, they always did, and miss the one moment before things went totally to hell.

Affecting casualness, he asked Willow, "Red, anybody ever just leave and set up shop there for good an' all, there on the astral side?"

"Sure," Willow replied cheerfully. "We call them 'ghosts.'"

"Ta, ever so," Spike said sourly. As bad as wolf-boy, he thought: sick of people glinting at him, like he was the straight man to their comedy act.

As he swung into another restless circuit of the porch, his back to them, Willow called, "No, really! We're grounded in the physical, Spike. Even you. Though that seems real, this is what is real. Cut off from it, we'd wither and die."

A laugh and a half, that the witch thought she needed to instruct a vamp on relating to the tangible, living in the goddam moment.

As he reached the far end of the porch and turned, there was Buffy right in front of him. "What's got you so wound up about this?" she wanted to know.

Spike flung his arms in frustration. "Always disrupts things, doesn't he? Everything's got to be his way, his agenda. And you can't even make up your mind to leave him shut out on the porch thirty seconds."

Buffy's face heated. "This time, I'll back you up," she promised.

"Fine--you do that. A little less eagerness would be nice. Go inside, dither there, why don't you?"

Buffy folded her arms. "Because I'm not real keen on a brawl on my front porch!"

"Not gonna hit him, pet, 'less he hits me first. And I expect he'll be on his best manners: he wants something from us. And he might have the teaspoon of brains required to know starting something in a confined space, in daylight, would be stupid with a side of suicidal. Not that I haven't known him to do stupider." Spike rocked on his heels, happily contemplating for a moment the fact that these days, if the both of them toppled into the yard, Angel would singe a whole lot faster than Spike would.

"I don't trust that look. We'll all go inside," Buffy decided.

When Spike guilelessly displayed the cigarette, his justification for being on the porch, Buffy started back toward the door, declaring over her shoulder, "There better not be fighting! I'm holding you responsible!"

"Don't you always? I'm to blame for winter, and taxes, and global warming. Price of fish?" he called after her as she and Willow vacated the porch and slammed the door behind them.

So that was sorted. Nothing more to do except wait, smoke, and try not to go off his head.

About four cigarettes later, a big black Mercury sedan pulled up nose to nose with wolf-boy's van. For a mercy, not the convertible, considering Angel himself was driving. Must really be desperate, risking that the overcast would hold.

The Merc's purring engine cut off. Then Angel was barreling up the walk, a loud checkered blanket over his head and clutched together in front, already fuming as he took the steps in one hop and hit the porch. Angel dumped the blanket with a scowl, then checked at finding Spike before him, blocking his way.

"All she knows," Spike said urgently, "is that he's called 'The Destroyer.'"

The Immense Forehead creased, taking that in. Then it smoothed in what Spike hoped was relief.

"Right," Angel said, pushing past to the door. Almost, he knocked. Then his hand moved aside to touch the bell: not wanting to test his welcome. Not wanting to know.

Before the door opened, Spike heard Buffy's voice, inside, saying, "Angel. Come in."

Pitching the cigarette, Spike stalked in grimly behind. He'd done his bit. Now it would all have to go how it went.

*********

There were sides, Dawn noticed. And the sides were weird: Angel and Spike against everybody.

Angel, sitting in Spike's corner chair with no objection from Spike, had his head bent most of the time, uncharacteristically subdued, working his hands together like he didn't know what else to do with them or he'd really like to have them around somebody's windpipe but couldn't because that would spoil all the brittle Yay team togetherness. Except when Oz, or Giles, mentioned anything about the kid, "The Destroyer." Then he'd shoot a quick look at Spike; and Spike, all bland and blank, sitting nearly opposite on the floor by the couch, next to Buffy's knees, wouldn't let on he'd noticed but there'd be a hint of an encouraging nod not visibly aimed at anyone in particular, and Angel would settle back to his anxious glower.

They were back-stopping each other, which was uber-weird.

And then the penny dropped: they were both doing whatever gyrations were necessary to not admit the baby was Angel's.

After Oz and Giles recapped the difficulties of getting out of Quor'toth, once you'd got in, Angel nodded heavily, volunteering somberly, "That's what I was told. That the Powers wouldn't help because the Balance was at issue, and I'd be disrupting it. I thought about it, but then you called," (he shot one of those quick, guarded looks at Buffy) "and that seemed to take priority." He turned a hand in explanation. "So I came."

That would have been about six months back: early summer, when all the SITs had still been here and the opposition had been Bringers, Turok-han, and the First; when Angel had been called in to organize things with his typical iron hand. When Spike had submitted to that brutal vamp ritual, the Supplice d'Allégance, to settle old scores once and for all; when he'd first told Dawn about the baby.

Leaning forward, probably not noticing her hand had landed on Spike's shoulder (but Spike noticed, pulling a tight, private smile not visibly aimed at anybody, either), Buffy asked Angel, "Why didn't you say anything about it?"

It was almost funny, watching both vampires go tense and cautious, and Dawn the only one watching them hard enough to notice. "It was a case," Angel said, checking every few seconds to see if Buffy was buying it, checking with his coach if he was getting it right. "A...ah, kidnapping. There's a prophecy. A couple, actually. A lot of different sides involved. I was, we were, acting on behalf...of the family. It was a case, Buffy," Angel said, strangling one hand with the other even harder. "And already dead-ended. You had your own apocalypse you were dealing with. And since I went to L.A., it's not as if we've been exactly communicating. I didn't think...you'd be interested."

"The Balance," Giles commented aridly, from the far end of the couch. "That's what has got us Fudo's attention, apparently. Is it possible to separate these two issues? The child, and Ethan?"

Leaning against the door arch, Oz replied, "Seems not. Per the Lady, no ticket out without him. She won't help, though. Except for that."

"Won't get her hands dirty," Spike observed bitterly. "That's what she has her damn 'instruments' for. I say, leave the whole thing where it is and the hell with the bunch of 'em."

"I can't do that, Spike," said Giles, folding his hands. "It's on my account, or at least because of my negligence, that things came to the pass that they did. It never for a moment occurred to me that those Initiative louts could hold Ethan for a score of hours, let alone three years. If I had known.... If I'd been less certain.... Well, it was my fault, you see."

"Come off it, Watcher: you didn't make him cut Bit. Or treat me to a non-stop porn show in my head. Or suck up to Digger, take his shilling to open the goddam Hellmouth. He made his own choices. Let him take the consequences."

"Nevertheless," said Giles. "Then, I did what was necessary. Now, knowing, I cannot consign him to-- Excuse me." Abruptly, Giles got up and left the room.

"Sweet on the bugger," Spike muttered, and Buffy whapped him. He twisted around to look at her indignantly. "Well, he is! Doesn't make them less a pair of old ponces to hit me for saying so!"

Willow noisily cleared her throat. "Back to the matter at hand," she suggested, brandishing a notebook. "I've made a decision tree here. There's no point wrangling over the details if we're rejecting the thing as a whole. What are the pros, and what are the cons? What do we need, and need to know, to come to a decision about this?" She looked around the room alertly, awaiting an answer she could write down.

Dawn figured it was gonna be about like a conference of mice over who was gonna bell the cat. Unfolding, she went after Giles but was distracted by the ringtone of her cellphone, upstairs. Sprinting to her bedroom, she found the little ruby phone languishing in an open drawer: at least Spike hadn't broken it.

Flipping it open to the accompaniment of its built-in Star Trek communicator chirp, Dawn said, "Yes?"

"Me," said Mike's voice, pitched to a growl. "Downstairs. Best open the door if you don't want it down."

Oops. Another constituency wanting to weigh in on the issue.

Folding the phone and sticking it in a pocket as she hustled down the stairs, Dawn debated which she should tell--Buffy or Spike.

**********

Mike knew there'd be no point pissing off the Slayer: she'd dust him as soon as look at him, except for deferring to Spike and generally Dawn. That was all right: he had no particular use for her neither. Standing in the upper doorway, that Dawn had nervously escorted him to along the tunnel, Mike told the Slayer, "Got no dispute with you: you look after her fairly well, mostly. It's Spike hauls her into things, puts her at risk. Guess it's Spike I have to talk to, then, about this damn Quor'toth nonsense."

At his shoulder, not having decided between standing by him and ducking behind the Slayer, Dawn piped up, "But it's Spike who's against going. And it's Buffy who's at least halfway inclined to say we'll go."

Mike frowned, puzzling out that unexpected alignment. Then he looked around at Dawn. "And you: what are you inclined to?"

She fluttered her hands, pleased. "You're asking me? Nobody asks me what I want!"

"Do you want to get into this thing, or not?" Mike asked patiently. Sometime, she was gonna have to come down on something, the one side or the other, and have no excuses afterward how things turned out.

"It would depend," Dawn formulated slowly, "on who's going. If it's everybody, I wouldn't want to be left here all alone."

It was as good as a backhand slap, that she considered his company as being alone. But he let it pass, waiting for her to have her say.

"But if it's just Buffy and a few others.... No, Spike would never stay behind, not when there's a chance we couldn't get back. And I have the feeling Angel's going, regardless. And Giles.... So I guess it depends on what Buffy decides."

We couldn't get back. That phrase, said so casually, struck Mike with an unaccustomed chill. Or maybe it was finding that his true sire, that bastard Angel, was apparently mixed up in it.

"That's not up for discussion," Buffy put in abruptly. "No matter who goes, or doesn't, you're staying. This isn't gonna be some picnic on a beach, Dawn. Nobody knows what's there, so we'd have to be prepared for just about anything. A seventeen-year-old girl is not basic combat equipment."

"Oh," said Dawn, deflated, relieved, and worried. "But then who...who would take care of me?"

"Willow, probably. Since there's no magic there, we'd be in no pressing need of a witch."

"I'm not staying with Willow! I don't even like Willow that much, most days, except when she makes the funny shapes pancakes, like Tara used to. I won't, and you can't make me!"

This wasn't going anyplace. Rearing back a little, Mike shouted, "Spike!" The basement walls and ceiling were covered now with those soundproofing waffle squares, but the upstairs door was open and Mike was confident any vamp would hear him regardless.

Spike came quick to the doorway, found no mayhem in progress, and ambled halfway down the stairs, taking a seat there. "Need rescuing, do you?"

Mike was reevaluating, too. Maybe it hadn't been more than a mishap with the phone, that had cut his conversation with Dawn off so suddenly. Certainly Dawn seemed none the worse for it. And Spike seemed easy and casual--not as though he'd done something Mike could rightly call him on. "This notion of dimension-hopping," he said to Spike, across the Slayer. "However it goes, it's gonna affect me. If you just take off for any long while, vamps roundabout will figure the lid's off and anything is fair game."

Spike plowed both hands through his hair, then told the Slayer, "He's right. Hadn't thought about that end of it."

The Slayer looked vexed. "And we just got it settled down, too. Why do there have to be all these complications!"

"On account of the Balance, I expect," Spike remarked thoughtfully, watching her. "If we get into this, the Balance goes to hell. Starting here, seems like. Another reason--"

"Don't say it!" Buffy warned.

Spike sighed and shut his eyes. "I don't even know what the fucking Balance is, pet, except that Fudo doesn't like it messed with. And we don't yet have any counter to Fudo, now do we?"

"We'll improvise!" Buffy declared, chin stubbornly lifted.

"Yeah, because that always works so well. Love, if you want, I'll go, do what I can, and you stay here with Bit and--"

"No! Not if-- Not if there's a chance...you couldn't get back."

"Love, there's always that chance. One way or the other. But you haven't got rid of me yet--"

"Hello!" Dawn interjected loudly. "Nobody's listening to me! I'm not staying with Willow, and you're both being severely dumb here! Spike, who thinks the whole thing is a mistake, is volunteering, and Buffy, who's all about the team, is figuring how to desert her sister. What's wrong with this picture?"

The witch, Willow, came down a few steps. "Are you guys gonna come back so we can work on the decision tree?"

Arms rigid and hands fisted at her sides, Dawn took no notice, glaring first at Buffy, then at Spike. "Spike, if you go, I better be with you, you better make sure that I am. Otherwise, I'll tell!"

"Fuck!" Spike came down in a blur of fast. Suddenly still, he held out a hand. Looking mulish, Dawn slapped hers into it...and her smell changed, and they collapsed, linked, to the floor.

When Mike pulled in a startled breath and started to kneel, Buffy pushed him back upright, saying wearily, "It's all right: they're just off again. Their new stupid trick, very boring for onlookers." Walking obliviously around the two bodies toward the stairs, she added, "You might as well come up--everybody else has. Get the vamp quotient right. I guess that's important, to have a minimum of two vampires snarking and posturing at each other. Otherwise, how could anything be decided?"

Slowly kneeling, determining that Dawn was still breathing and pumping her blood around but her smell strange, like sleeping, Mike responded absently, "I'll wait."

Buffy turned at the bottom of the stairs. "Mike, I don't want to make a thing about this, but I want you where I can see you. Or else gone. Your pick."

Thoroughly unnerved and bewildered, Mike obeyed the Slayer's summons. With several backward glances at the sprawled pair on the basement floor, he followed her up the stairs.

**********

Materializing in the occluded privacy of the middle air, Dawn immediately rounded on Spike, demanding, Why shouldn't I? Why should I give up what gives me some leverage here? I won't be left behind, Spike. I won't! Anyway, who the hell cares if Angel's got a kid?

Buffy would. Bit, turn one minute from what you think, what you want, and consider. The child we're s'posed to fetch, the child in Quor'toth, is Angel's son. Out of Herself, Queen Darla: his Sire. Which shouldn't even be possible, but I guess it's something was granted him. As the Champion. And how will that seem to Buffy? That what turned him to Angelus, with her, was blessed with a child with someone else. I can't even imagine how bad that will hurt her. Like it's some wrong in her, that prevented it, that made it go bad.

In this place, it was impossible to see or hear the truth and doubt it. And it wasn't some hypothetical Buffy with her, hurting and frantic to convince her, but an actual (if shimmering and insubstantial) Spike. They were both about the same size this time, and the last time, too, Dawn noted with satisfaction.

That's stupid! Why should she care what Angel does?

Maybe she shouldn't. But she does. Angel knows it, too, how it would hit her. Why he's kept all mum about it. She'd take it personally, Bit; and take it to heart. Make her feel lower than dirt. Maybe can't keep it from her forever, but right now, if she knew, it would force her decision. She'd throw herself into this like she throws herself into everything: full tilt, straight ahead, blind to all else. To make it up to Angel that she couldn't be the one to kindle with a child for him. And instead produced a right monster, Angelus, loose in the world again, so she had to slam a sword through him, send him to hell. She's not forgot, Bit. She'd be hell-bent to present Angel with a goddam child, even if it wasn't hers.

All maybes and supposes, Dawn challenged.

Bit, you don't understand. Just don't understand.... He was quiet a moment, thinking. Then he said, You might think a vamp wouldn't care, neither. But I've seen Dru with her dolls. How she fed on children when we could find them. Liked the notion of a child inside of her--it took her like that. An' then get all wound up to realize they were all dead. Cry sometimes for days.... Then there'd be a round of punishing her dolls. And me, like as not. And like that, for awhile. And then it would all begin again....

Neither "Eew! Ick!" nor "That's insane!" seemed an adequate response. And she didn't think that Spike would understand "TMI," even yet.

In this place, censors were off. Though it pained him, too, he was saying what he knew and what he believed. And it wasn't as if she hadn't asked....

Although it was ugly, and twisted her up inside to hear and partly imagine Drusilla's warped and deadly child hunger, even more intolerable was for Spike to think Dawn a child, unable to understand grown-up things.

She'd never felt blood-thirst or the compulsion to hunt and hurt, but she could imagine and assign them their fair weight, for a vamp. She knew about the seething intensities of sex by the battered walls and broken furniture left in their wake. She could so know things!

OK, that's Dru, crazy enough to think women get pregnant by eating babies. That's not Buffy!

Buffy's given up, Spike responded simply. Slayers don't last. Don't get to have families of their own, children. In that way, if no other, vamps are safe. She had human lovers, a few, and dumped them when she saw there wasn't no future in it. For her or them, neither one. Part of why she turned to me, I expect. Like Dru, punishing her dolls for what she couldn't have. S'not like that now...but we had bad spells, too, there for awhile.... Part of why she don't necessarily treat you all that well but still holds onto you like grim death. 'Cause you're as near to a child as she'll ever have. But what if she found that wasn't so? That what she'd given up on was possible, after all. Wouldn't she go for it like she goes for everything? And is it likely, now, Angel would turn her away or refuse her? Once she knows, won't be long before she kicks me to the curb. 'Cause I got none of that miracle spunk in me. Can't do that, give her that. 'Cause I ain't yet suffered enough, or done right by the soul once I had it, or some other damn thing. Dunno, just how it is. Won't make me give her up, though. Not till she tells me...I'm not fit for her no more. Not enough for her.... Not without a fight!

It was good they were something like their actual sizes because it let Dawn hug him close, or try to, anyway. It was like trying to hug smoke. The surfaces never quite connected. But it was the thought that counted, right? You're just being all insane-o insecure. If it was a miracle, it was probably a one-off, never to be repeated. A prophecy child, after all--not anything normal. And anyway, Buffy doesn't care about that! She's said so, over and over.

Yeah: over and over. 'F she didn't say it so much, I might believe her better. Wish she'd leave off about it, actually.

Sometimes, Buffy isn't too bright about some things. I think she was worried you were worried about it, which makes you worry about it even if you didn't before, so she tells you again, and around and around. Spike, I think you're making this whole thing up in your head. Because it's Angel, who has this nasty habit of taking what's yours. Or trying to. But on the chance you're not, and because it's something you've managed to tie yourself up in knots about, when Buffy finds out, it won't be from me. I promise. Dawn could feel the relief pouring off him, like the sweat of a fever breaking. However, in return, I want you to promise that if you go into Quor'toth, I go, too. You have to: we're connected.

All right, Bit. The way things are piling on, don't think there's much chance to dodge it now, for all my trying. May have to smuggle you across in the baggage, but I'll manage, some way. I'd miss you something terrible, that's true, though you're a bitch brat more'n half the time and I don't know why I put up with you.

Because you love me, Dawn responded smugly, reflecting that one way or the other, her lever had worked, and that was all she cared about. Come on: let's get back. We're probably all gross, laying on the basement floor. Mike probably freaked. He doesn't know about any of this!

As she bounced to her feet and brushed herself off briskly, watching Spike stir and start looking dimly around the basement, it occurred to Dawn that extorting a promise that she could go meant leaving Mike behind--maybe forever. She stifled the pang that gave her by reflecting he'd have Sue to console him. The way vamps focused on the present moment, without much by the way of regrets or expectations, likely he wouldn't even miss her all that much. She'd been here; now she wasn't, not even a smell to remember her by; too bad, big deal.

"Bit? What's wrong?"

"Nothing! Absolutely fricking nothing!" Suddenly in a foul mood, she charged up the stairs.

**********

Well, it'd all gone straight to hell, just as Spike had expected. Climbing the stairs to the first floor hall, Spike found it dark outside. In only a few subjective minutes, hours had passed, and apparently the decision tree was no longer an issue. All the signs said the decision had been made: everybody scattered to different tasks, research mode. The Watcher slumped unconscious on the couch, glasses laid aside, so not likely napping. Most likely, gone astral to natter with his fuck pal Rayne, learn about the doings over there: what passed for reconnaissance. Buffy and Angel head to head in the front room, seemingly discussing weaponry. Bit and Mike passing by, Bit going on twenty to the dozen about Fudo, Mike with head bent, listening but giving nothing away, as they went out onto the front porch. Didn't see wolf-boy, maybe gone out to the van for something.

"Spike! You put porn on my computer!"

In the den, Willow was half rising from a chair to berate him, eyes wide and face flushed.

"Yeah. So?"

"So my e-mail in-box is now all full of offers how I can enhance my 'male equipment!'"

Spike shrugged, trying to overcome the sense of being overwhelmed, scattered, everything coming at him at once. "Wasn't but a few bookmarks, favorites. Didn't actually keep anything."

"You've polluted my laptop! Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean out the cookies those sites set? Cookies: yech! And once you get on some pervert's list, you can never get off! I'm gonna have to change my e-mail and everything! Maybe wipe the whole hard drive!"

Only the last part of that registered. And the witch's furious indignation, of course, that didn't concern him--not over a little porn. Besides, done was done. Sliding between the table and the wall, Spike took Willow's place before the laptop and started hitting keys with two fingers. "Don't wipe nothing, I have all sorts of notes here that I need." Reaching for his glasses, he further displaced her, oblivious to her indignant squawks.

Her remark about ghosts, on the porch, had set him thinking about something he'd read in the Watchers' archives he'd been browsing through for months, lately with special attention to all matters dimensional. Hadn't much noted it at the time, didn't seem much use to it; but it'd been about some bloke who claimed to have ended a haunting by unconventional means--with a weapon. A sword, or something like, that could cleave the immaterial.

He was still searching when he heard Dawn squeal outside, and a big, unpleasantly familiar voice bellow, "So you haven't chosen the path of wisdom. Who opposes me? Who is your champion, Slayer? Or will you face me yourself?"

Fudo. Damn.