Something about having Spike genuinely there with her breaks her out of the guilt-filled stupor that’s consumed her for a good part of the past week, and the burden of the next two days is easier to shoulder with him at her side, watching her fight with unadulterated glee, making sure that she eats enough, constantly jibing at her until her early insecurities aren’t nearly as strong. It’s amazing how just telling him about her fears is enough to spur her forward, the old weariness all but gone in the face of her determination.

They’d scoured the area where Simone’s friend had died, found her abandoned little apartment, and left after hours of fruitless searching. No clues on that end, no details about Simone or what she’d been doing. 

Faith had been hooked up to an IV at home the day before, her blood work still a mystery and Spike reports that Angel’s worn and hopeless. He’s using Twilight’s funding to ensure that Faith gets home-based help, but even money can’t do everything when the doctors can’t do anything. 

Faith’s always been tenacious. It gives them a little more time, but that’s running out, and Spike’s had his hands full forcing Buffy to forget her worries and focus only on their impossible mission. 

She chews on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully as she cleans out the coffee filters in the back room of the coffeehouse, wondering what they can do tonight. There must be something else to find in their area, some other clue to what’s going on. Willow’s still hunting for leads on the scythe, but she’s already told Buffy apologetically that she doesn’t think there’s anything. Not without magic. Angel’s doing research, but so far, all he’s found is numerous dead ends. There’s nothing.

“Buffy?” Tina pokes her head into the back. “You’re done for the day, right? I’ll take over for you.”

“Thanks.” She does the early morning shifts only once a week, but they still tend to leave her drained, and she’s looking forward to a long nap before Spike arrives.

“Oh, and there’s someone in front for you.”

Or not.

She’s hoping it’s Willow- and there’s something she hasn’t felt in months- and it’s a mild surprise when she spots Dawn at one of the front tables, lifting her fingers in a half-wave as she texts someone rapidly on her phone. “Hey.”

“Hi. You’ve been all absentee sister lately.” But Dawn’s smiling, the barb of the comment softened by the understanding on her face. “Xander told me what’s going on. How’s Faith?”

“Worse.”

“Oh.” A shadow crosses her face, the stirrings of worry and fear that Buffy sees in the mirror every day since she’d first heard. Then it’s gone, and Dawn’s beaming again. “But I have something that might help you. Xander was working at a hospital in Fremont this morning, plastering up a hole in the wall of one of their quarantine centers.”

“Is that safe?” Buffy wonders inanely, taking a seat and drumming her fingers on the table. As nice as it is to see Dawn, her bed beckons, the lost comfort a reproof for ignoring Spike’s orders to go to sleep last night in favor of watching bad late-night soaps with him. He’s going to be so irritatingly smug tonight if she can’t keep her eyes open on patrol. “Uh…Does he have to get into a spacesuit or something so he won’t catch the disease?”

“No risk of that here,” Dawn says grimly. “He was talking to some of the workers. Turns out, the room housed three girls with weird bruises on their skins that no one could identify. And one of them just…knocked a hole through the wall and escaped quarantine a few days ago. Just like that.”

Realization jerks Buffy from thoughts of bed, a potential new lead even more tantalizing than sleep. “Slayers.” 

“Slayers.” Dawn nods. “The other two are still at the hospital, though, in another quarantine ward. So if they know anything…”

“Yeah. I might even know the third,” Buffy says thoughtfully. It would explain why Simone’s friend’s apartment had seemed more abandoned than Spartan, why she’d only just turned up again a few days before. 

They traipse out of the coffeehouse together, heading for the closest train on the next block. “Everything okay?” Dawn asks suddenly. “The way that Xander tells it, you’re a total mess these days.” At her sister’s sharp look, she amends, “Well, he didn’t say it like that! But I’m not dumb. Visits to Giles’s house? Short, anguished confrontations with the Big Forehead himself? Spike all grumpy? Of course you’re in pieces.”

Buffy punches her arm, not altogether playfully. “Shut up. I’m fine. I’m doing better. Angel and I even talked about stuff a few days ago. And that’s starting to…well, make sense, at least.” 

“Wait, you spoke to Angel again?” Dawn pauses mid-step, turning a worried glance to her sister. “How was Spike about that?”

“What does Spike have to with any of it?” Buffy demands, annoyed. “Why does everyone seem to think that Spike has some right to all my other interactions?”

An incoming train roars past, and Dawn takes that moment to shout over it, “Well, I think that I’d have a right to know if Xander was hanging out with his ex- y’know, if they weren’t all demons or dead.” 

“I’m not dating Spike!” 

Dawn smirks. “Yeah, okay.” 

“I’m not.”

“Sure.”

“And I can speak to Angel whenever I want, and Spike can get cranky about it, but that doesn’t matter because we’re. Just. Friends.” They take their seats on the next train, and Dawn mulls over Buffy’s comment for a split second before she perks up again, undaunted by the glare now fixed on her.

“So what did you and Angel talk about, anyway? Don’t tell me that you’re best buddies and perfectly happy now,” she says warningly. “I kind of like this world.”

Buffy shrugs self-consciously. “That’s really none of your business. But…I don’t know. It’s better now. I’m not going to date him anytime soon- or ever,” she adds hastily at the dark look in her sister’s eyes. “That ship sailed a long, long time ago. But I think that maybe we can work together if we have to.”

“Like now.” Dawn is silent for a long moment. “So what is going on? Do you have any ideas?”

“Just one.” They keep their voices low, avoiding curious glances from the other passengers as Buffy tells, yet again, the story of her doubts, the scythe, and the slayer curse that she still suspects she might have unleashed on her girls. And even with Spike’s voice in her head reminding her that she isn’t the source of all evil and that there are other factors, it’s impossible for her not to feel the same old recriminations and self-doubt. 

When she finishes, Dawn’s glaring at her, arms folded in stubborn disapproval. “Spike’s right. You are an idiot.”

She blinks. “What?” 

“You’re blaming yourself for this? Buffy, you broke the scythe a year ago! And these cases have only started recently.”

“That we know of,” she objects, frowning at the idea. There could be hundreds of slayers, the ones who hate her and would never contact her about it, all falling victim to the virus, no way out and no hope left.

Dawn rolls her eyes. “Yeah, because if this had been happening for the whole year, you never would have found all these cases now. Come on, Buffy, you’re just looking for reasons to blame yourself. Why would Faith be so far along when you’re perfectly healthy?”

She’s already thought about this. “I died. So maybe I’m not part of the slayer line anymore. And since it starts at Faith, she’s one of the first to be targeted.”

“Except she isn’t first,” Dawn points out. “You said that Simone was already dead when Faith was only beginning to get sick. And that some of Kennedy’s girls were just as sick. It doesn’t make sense.”

Doubt is building within her, fueled by Spike and Dawn’s words and that stubborn part of her that really doesn’t want this to be her fault, no matter what history has taught her. “I don’t know. But if you have any better ideas…”

“Here’s one,” Dawn retorts. “If you were out to do some mega-evil, who’re the first people you’d try to take out?”

“Slayers.” It’s a fair assumption, one that they’ve discussed briefly in the past. “But Simone wasn’t exactly a beacon of good. And Angel’s been researching this virus in the Watchers’ Diaries, and he hasn’t found any sign of it. This is something new.” The more she thinks about it, the less likely it seems. “And what use is targeting just a tiny percentage of slayers when there are so many more left to stop you? Satsu and Kennedy alone have dozens, and only a few are sick. It’s just not of the useful.” She smirks suddenly, the winning argument against Dawn in her hand. “Spike thinks so, too.”

Dawn’s scowl grows, shrinks, returns with a vengeance as a smirk to rival her sister’s. “So what else does Spike think?” she taunts, the slightest of suggestion in her voice- and for Dawn, that’s pretty much heavy innuendo. When did her little sister get so pushy about her romantic life, anyway? “How’s that going for you?”

Buffy winces. “We’re not talking about that.”

“Why not?” Dawn whines. “Look, I’ve had my issues with him before, but he’s pretty okay now.” She shrugs halfheartedly. “And if I had to choose anyone for you, it’d be him, because you’re perfect together, and he makes you happy- when he’s not making you rage,” she adds as an aside, grinning at the thought. “And you’re both obviously in love with each other, so why do we even need to have this conversation?”

It’s tempting to go back to fighting about the slayers now. At least that’s something that she can answer. “We’re not in love with each other,” Buffy says finally.

Dawn frowns. “But you’re in love with him.”

She can’t refute it, not when something erupts within her to object a denial that pointless. It’s hard enough keeping it from Spike. She can’t lie to Dawn, too. So she remains silent until Dawn finally ventures, “And he’s in love with you.”

“No.” And it’s still painful to say it aloud. “He isn’t.”

Dawn raises an eyebrow. “Is this Spike we’re talking about? ‘I’ll do anything for you, my whole life revolves around you, I cross half the planet every day to see you’ Spike? Have you seen how he looks at you? It’s so bad that half the time, I have to yell at him for being indecent. Like he wants to just grab you and-“ She makes a face. “And I’m so not going there.”

Buffy shudders. “Good. And if you never, ever talk about me or Spike like that again, it won’t be too soon.”

“Right.” 

“Yeah.”

“But…”

“It’s not love,” she says firmly, and she can feel trusted defenses fall with every word. “I know that it seems…but it’s not love.”

“So…friends with benefits?” Dawn suggests, managing to smirk even through the perturbed look in her eyes.

“Dawn!”

Their stop is announced and Dawn manages to escape her sister’s slap and duck out the doors of the train before Buffy can catch up to her. “You two are so blind,” Dawn mumbles when Buffy’s finally able to wind through the crowd and climb the stairs to the street behind her. 

“Can we just focus on the slayers?” Buffy says wearily. She spends enough time dwelling on Spike alone to waste even more of it now. And whatever progress she’s felt like she’s made with Spike in the past few days is gone now, lost to Dawn’s intrusive questions about something that’s beyond her control and probably a bad idea, anyway.

Bad. Much with the badness. Very much.

“Fine.” Dawn scowls. “How are we going to find them?”

That’s something that she’s good at. Buffy Summers: breaking rules and tracking down the out-of-bounds since 1997. And so it doesn’t take long before they’re both securely ensconced in doctor’s coats and unlocking the door to the quarantined ward right in front of a clueless set of nurses on watch. 

The two slayers lying on opposite beds in front of them aren’t nearly as far along as she’d thought they’d be. For one, they’re barely beginning the battle with the disease, and one of them doesn’t even have visible marks. And both are alert enough to turn and glare at her as one. 

She pulls out a chart, pretending to ignore their stares. “I’m, uh…”

“Buffy. We know,” one spits out.

Buffy squints at them. “Do I know you?” Come to think of it, they do look familiar, and she thinks she’s seen them before harassing her on patrol. So the anti-Buffy brigade that roams San Fran has been hit, too.

The first turns away in disgust, but the second slayer, the one without the latticework, eyes her thoughtfully. “Why are you here? Did Maedre get the word out to you?”

“Maedre?”

“She was with us before we were moved. Not from around here, but she also had the markings, so we thought she might have gotten help.” The slayer looks almost hopeful, and Buffy’s heart wrenches at the memory of the furious friend of Simone’s who’d denied any knowledge of other victims in need.

“I don’t know,” she lies, moving to sit on the bed beside the other girl. “How far along are you? You don’t seem-“ She stops short as the girl raises her hospital gown to show the pattern emanating from the side of her waist, nearly covering her entire torso.

“I didn’t even think it was anything at first,” the girl admits. “I’d been out fighting a few days before, so I thought it was just some weird black and blue marks. And then Tray started getting them, too, and that’s when we went to a doctor. They put us here.” She sighs. “And since then, all they’ve done is take blood and make worried noises over our checkups. I’d leave, too, but what’s the point? No one else can help us.”

“Buffy can,” Dawn objects, stepping forward. “She’s been hunting for the cause for days. Can we see-“

“Sure.” The girl pulls her gown higher, pointing at her side. “That’s where it started. And Tray’s started on her wrist.”

They look like Faith’s and Simone’s and all the other slayers’, the same pattern of markings running across their skin to mottle and raise it. Buffy traces the path, pausing only at an area of the slayer’s waist that isn’t quite as rough. 

Or rather…a familiar circle of roughness. It’s one she knows well when there are few who’d recognize it, one that only someone who’s seen it hundreds of times before could single out amidst the bruises. “You were bitten by that vamp-eater,” she notes thoughtfully.

“Vamp-eater?” the girl frowns.

Tray perks up from the other bed. “That damn monster terrorizing half of San Fran’s undead? Yeah, I think we’ve all had at least a few run-ins with it.” She rubs her wrist, wincing. “I managed to get away without any injuries most of the time, but Arianna was nearly mauled.”

Arianna shrugs good-naturedly. “Hey, I was doing fine. That thing doesn’t kill people anyway, just vampires. It’s just terrifying, and…” She’s still talking, but both Dawn and Buffy have stopped listening, their eyes meeting with sudden clarity. And in tandem, they’re both up and grabbing Tray’s wrist before she has a chance to stop them.

“Hey!” But Buffy’s already studying the pattern, finding the scars of the demon bite just centimeters from where the bruises begin.

“You don’t think…” Dawn breathes, and Buffy’s nodding vigorously.

It has to be. Demon bites, close to where the disease starts, but not close enough that they’re obviously the cause. The disease isn’t visible immediately, ensuring that it won’t be tracked down to a random demon, and the demon is targeting vampires instead, leaving the slayers’ defenses down. Cleverly executed, a survival instinct to fight slayers with the only weapon they can’t combat. Utter ignorance.

And she remembers fear, unnatural, primitive terror that had overtaken her at the moment of contact. As though the slayer itself had been straining within her to escape a natural enemy.

It has to be. 

“We need to talk to Angel. Find out if he’s seen these demons in his area.” It’s too much to hope now, but she can’t help the rush of excitement that runs through her at the revelation. This is something. Something tangible, beyond magic and theories and simple science. And if it’s true, they’ve been going about their research all wrong. 

She makes the phone call the moment she enters the house, dismissing the time difference as irrelevant in the face of more important news. “Call Willow,” she instructs Dawn. “She has Kennedy’s number. Let the other slayers know what’s going on, to stay away from the demon. We need to figure out what we’re fighting. I’ll tell Angel that we’re going to have to up the research-“ The phone line is picked up, and she turns back to her call. “Angel?”

“Buffy!” Angel sounds just as startled to hear from her as last time, but she chooses not to dwell on that. “Spike’s not here.”

“I know.” He’s due at her house soon, if he comes as early as he has been since they talked things out. “I need to ask you something. Is there a demon in your area? Kind of huge and nasty-looking with, like, an aardvark mouth?”

“The one that’s been biting the vampires?” Angel sighs. “Yeah, we’ve had a couple of them. Faith managed to slice off one’s snout, but I saw another one out hunting a few days ago, so they’re still around.”

“Faith sliced off its snout?” Dawn perks up at her words, eyes wide.

“Not before it took a chunk out of her leg. We had to-“

Buffy cuts him off. “How long ago?” 

“What?”

“When did this happen? Last month? Earlier this year? Just before she got sick?”

There’s a heavy pause on the other line. “Just before…you don’t think…?”

“I most definitely do.” Dawn is talking excitedly on her cell phone, nodding enthusiastically and motioning to Buffy. “Hang on.”

“Tell Angel that we’re coming over.” Dawn clicks off the phone. “I called Xander, too. We need to track down this demon in Giles’s books and figure out how to reverse the demon venom.”

“Research party?” Angel says dubiously.

“Research party,” Buffy confirms. “Call Kennedy, warn her about the demon. No sense in getting more slayers infected. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

“Be where?” It’s Spike at the window, eyebrows raised expectantly at them, and Buffy can’t contain her elation anymore, not now that they’ve finally got a lead. She rushes to him, throwing her arms around him as soon as he steps into the apartment.

“It’s the beast! That vamp demon’s been poisoning slayers, not some weird scythe thing. You were right.” His arms snake around her waist, pulling her closer, and she inhales his scent with heady enjoyment before she finally moves back to smile tentatively at him. “You were right.”

There’s a soft smile playing at his lips as he murmurs, “Think I should take out an ad in the paper, pet?”

She’s supposed to slap him now, make some snarky comment about how he should enjoy it while it lasts. But not when he’s looking at her like that, when they’ve finally gotten somewhere and everything’s kind of perfect for a moment, wrapped in Spike’s arms with that awed grin he gets sometimes directed at her in full force.

They never hug. They’ll curl up next each other on the couch, and she’ll lean against Spike and he’ll give her a half-embrace, but she can’t remember it ever being like this, arms tight around her and looking down at her as though she’s his. And even in its incongruity it feels more natural than anything else in a long time.

I love you, she doesn’t say, and he doesn’t respond. And of all the times unspoken, of all the words unsaid, these three have never felt so close to her lips as when she’s enfolded in the embrace of the man she loves, in a moment that feels blissfully unending.

“What are you snickering at?” Spike says crossly, looking over her shoulder at Dawn, and Buffy reluctantly separates from him to peer at her sister’s smirking face.

“Nothing,” Dawn says innocently, giving Buffy a significant look from where she’s laughing at them both. “I’m just happy that we’ve worked this out.”

Spike softens, turning back to smile at Buffy. “Yeah. Me too.”

And she’s lost again.