Chapter 7: Close Call

“I think this is the place.” Willow glanced down at the address she was holding, then back up at the apartment building. Tara was in class all day, so she’d brought Giles along for her apartment-hunting. They’d already seen two places that fell into the “one step above a cardboard box” category, and had one more to check out after this. The outside of the present prospect didn’t look especially promising, but at least there were no visible holes in the roof or walls.

As they emerged from the building a frightful half hour later, Giles said, “Willow, perhaps you should consider a different neighborhood?”

“Poor college students, Giles. We’re kind of embracing the tightness of the budget.”

“Yes, well…”

“Besides, this place wasn’t so bad, right? Better than the last two.”

“Spike’s crypt is better equipped than that hellhole!”

“Yeah. But I mean, if it weren’t for the rats…” At Giles’ horrified expression, she cut herself off. “Hey, speaking of Spike and, well… hell… How do you think Buffy’s doing?”

While Giles furrowed his brow in an attempt to follow that transition, Willow added, “It seems like she’s been spending a lot of time with Spike since she got back.”

“Yes, well, I’m certain it can’t be easy for her. Though I’m not sure Spike is the best counselor for these purposes…”

“Well, he is the only one who knows what it’s like to be dead.” She shrugged. “It’s not like she could go to a real therapist or something. I mean, what would she say? ‘I’m having some trouble readjusting after being dead and spending an indeterminate amount of time in a hell dimension before my friends resurrected me’?”

“No, certainly not that,” said Giles. “I think the most we can do for Buffy is to be supportive, and do our best to understand what she’s been through.” He eyed Willow carefully. “Perhaps if you told me more about the spell that you performed.”

She avoided his gaze. “I’ve already told you everything.”

She was lying. She hadn’t told him about all the scary things that had happened to her when she’d done the spell. She’d sworn the others to secrecy, knowing that Giles would freak out and lecture her on magic safety, something she so did not need right now.

It looked like she was going to get the lecture anyway. “The spell you did was very dangerous. Any number of things could have gone wrong. We don’t even know for sure where she was.” This was as close as he could come to voicing the nagging feeling he had about Buffy’s afterlife experience.

Willow tensed up, starting to get defensive. “Giles, she was in hell. She told us. And nothing went wrong, so there’s nothing to worry about.” Deliberately changing the subject, she added, “Come on, I think this last apartment is in a nicer part of town.”

If she was honest with herself, she was torn between wanting Giles to figure out why Buffy was acting the way she was, and not wanting him to get too concerned. Because if Giles thought there was something seriously wrong with Buffy, then that would mean it was really her fault. She was the one who’d brought Buffy back.

It was supposed to be this great, wonderful thing – their best friend was alive and safe and not in whatever awful place she’d been in. Except for some reason, Buffy didn’t seem very happy about it. Wasn’t that the whole reason they were here, looking at apartments – because Buffy didn’t even want her around? Even if she could rationalize away Buffy’s seeking comfort in Spike, Willow couldn’t shake the feeling in her gut that maybe everything wasn’t as neat and tidy as she’d planned.

*****

Buffy rolled onto her side, coughing up vampire dust. When Merrick, her first Watcher, had explained the hazards of the job, choking on vampire dust hadn’t been mentioned as one of the health risks. That really should’ve been in the handbook. If anybody’d thought to give her the handbook.

She pushed up to a sitting position and looked around for her weapons bag. Spotting it dangling from a tall tombstone, she dragged herself to her feet and collected it.

Okay now, Buffy, she told herself. Let’s try that once more with some enthusiasm.

She picked up a stray stake that had fallen out of her bag and shoved it listlessly back in. Nothing about this patrol had been satisfying. The first two vamps had been far too easy, barely putting up a fight before she had to stake them out of sheer pity. Nothing that stupid should be allowed to live. And that last one had nearly bought her a one-way ticket to the great beyond – or wherever Willow had pulled her back from. He hadn’t even been that strong, but he’d had her flat on her back, and not in a sexy way. More of a fangy way. And the scary part? She wasn’t even sure she cared.

She thought she’d finally come to terms with being the Slayer in the past year. Once she tapped into the whole First Slayer thing, and managed to get past the fear of losing control that Faith’s downward spiral had caused, she came to accept slaying for the primal release that it was. Even when her life was falling apart, when Riley was leaving her, when her mom was sick, when Glory was after Dawn, she’d taken comfort in slaying, the nightly catharsis of being able to kill things with her bare hands. Even her death, when it came, had been comforting, a Slayer’s final duty.

But since she’d been back, it just hadn’t felt the same. Nothing felt real anymore, not even her sacred calling. She felt detached from the world, disconnected, like somebody pulled the plug when she died and no one ever bothered to plug it back in. She found herself longing for the release that a vampire’s fangs could bring, seeking once again the escape of death.

She never managed to go through with it – always, at the last minute, survival instinct kicked in, or slayer instinct, or something, and she’d end up like she was tonight, pondering a close call instead of shuffling off her mortal coil. Some part of her was always disappointed when that happened, and even thought she was repulsed by it, not even slaying the crap out of vampires could make that feeling go away.

But there was one thing that did, if only temporarily. Finishing up her patrol by taking a route that was quickly becoming habit, Buffy heard the soft strains of the piano as she approached the crypt.

Huh. That was odd. Spike didn’t exactly strike her as a classical music connoisseur. Maybe he’d been eaten by a Beethoven-loving demon. “Spike?” she called, easing the door open.

His head popped up from the trapdoor. “Down here, love.”

The irony wasn’t lost on her that, in her struggle to learn how to live again, she sought solace in the one person who had been determined to kill her not more than a year ago. Now, of course, he’d probably be horrified and sickened if she asked him to fulfill the promise he made to her in that alley behind the Bronze. He had made another promise since then, one forged in love and sealed in blood, and losing her had only made him more steadfast in his resolve to never let it happen again.

Sometimes she thought it was the only thing keeping her alive.