I want you to be you
Don't change
Because you think I'd like you to be different
I fell in love with you



“Great jumping jellyfish,” Xander whispered as the group looked down from a small ledge into the chaos below. Demons of assorted shapes and colors flounced, slid, and flopped from the green-tinged, flaming portal in the center of the former library while Jonathan and the other blondish, foppish nerd huddled in a corner, chanting and… fluting? Xander shook his head. That couldn’t be right. Debbie and Pete seemed unfazed by the commotion, intent on an argument he’d wager had been brewing far before their little unplanned trip to demonhood.

“Warren,” Xander heard Buffy whisper venomously. “I should’ve known he’d have something to do with this.”

“What’s the who?” Willow asked.

“Warren’s down there. Apparently sex slaves and invisibility games just tipped the iceberg with this guy. Geez, now he’s adding Hellmouth summoning to the list?”

Willow piped up. “It’s not the actual Hellmouth. Remember last time with the ick and the tentacles? Oh, right. You wouldn’t. Cause you weren’t there.” Xander looked up curiously. “But we told you about the ick and the tentacles. And Angel with the ‘argh’ and me with the ‘eep,’ and some old high school memories are really better left buried, aren’t they?” Willow dropped off with a nervous laugh at Xander and Buffy’s long stares, turning to survey the scene with nervous eyes. “It’s magic. A lot of it. Not enough to open the Hellmouth, but enough to make a whole big kablooey.” She finally pointed to the two nerds near the far wall. “Over there. We have to stop them to stop the demon portal.”

“What did I miss?” Anya’s voice broke the tension with a tenor slightly too brass for the small space.

“We’re demon-killing, sweetie.” Xander looked back as his girlfriend bounded up the tunnel toward them. “Glad to know closing up the shop takes priority over world-saveage.”

“Pish-tosh.” Anya waved an airy hand. “If I don’t balance the register before I leave, I’ll dream of little dollar bills with little mutated arms and legs chasing me down a road of uneven coinage. And I know you wouldn’t want that. Besides, it’s just two measly little demons.”

“Umm, Anya?” Willow’s voice cut in. “Really, not so much.”

Anya peered into the smoky hull of the building. “Oh, nuts.”

“Right,” Buffy said. “Willow and Xander, you’re backup. Keep the demons away from the two nerds, and kill as many as you can. Anya, you get to make them close their little glowy portal.”

“What? Why do I have to…?”

“Because I said so,” Buffy cut her off, but not without compassion. “And because Willow shouldn’t have to get so close to the magic.” Willow shot her a timid, grateful look. “Spike and I will take out the dangerous duo. Got it?” The slight shift in Spike’s muscles behind her was the only signal Buffy needed. Together, the small group leapt into the fray.

+++

“Buffy,” Pete’s lip curled in disgust around the word as the lithe blonde landed in front of him. “And… the vampire?” Spike’s lazy smirk split the space between them, its usual effect lost, as Pete had already turned to Debbie. “What the hell did you do? Lead them right to us?”

At that, Buffy stepped between the pair. “You know, this whole macho guy thing? So totally over-rated.” A hard uppercut to his jaw sent him spiraling toward a mass of stationary spiny demons to the left. Debbie moved to intercept Buffy’s next punch and found herself struggling against Spike’s firm grip.

“Let me go! I have to save him. You bastard,” she shrieked and wailed, finally jerking herself from Spike’s arms as he felt his right shoulder give.

“Sodding,” punch, “stupid,” kick, “bint,” Spike bit out with a final hard slap. “Just what’s it gonna take?” he said as he defended a flurry of spins and punches as Debbie regrouped and rounded on him. “You already let him kill you. Gonna let him do it again just for jollies? Losing your pride and all that made you human not enough for you?”

“You don’t know anything,” Debbie growled as she wiped a strand of stray blood from her lip.

“Know a thing or two about punishment, darling.” Spike’s last word fell hard as Debbie managed a fierce kick to his gut. “And I definitely know,” he took another swipe at her, “a glutton when I see one.”

+++

Willow struggled against some large purple demon that some recess of her mind had deemed “Slurpee,” while Xander fought against another that seemed mostly made of tails and teeth at her side. Anya stood beside them, staking random vampires if she could get a clean shot while the demons turned on each other, and occasionally hitting Slurpee with a stray piece of horn she’d garnered from one of the growing pile of dead surrounding them. Together, they neared the two chanting nerds.

Suddenly, Andrew and Jonathan noticed their slow, steady approach. Warren, on the other hand, was cutting a careful swath through the pack of incensed and largely befuddled demons and was steps away from the broken talisman that had fallen from Jonathan’s pocket when Andrew’s fey shriek pierced the air. “Warren, help us.” A second’s distraction was sufficient. A Chaos demon shoved the brunette leader to the rocky floor while its mate trod heavily over him. Andrew screamed and hid his face. Jonathan merely watched in terror as their friend’s skull cracked in the sickening tread of slime and blood. Shaken and waning, the two looked up just as Anya neared their clearing.

“You guys, they’re humans,” she tossed back to Willow and Xander. Magenta internal fluids dripped from the gory horn in her left hand as she held the stake in her right hand aloft. To Andrew and Jonathan she added with similar pep, “It’s been a while since I got to kill humans.”

The two trembling nerds faced each other.

“Run?” Andrew asked.

“Run.” Jonathan confirmed.

With a word, they cancelled the summoning spell and fled the cavern, bone and flute in hand.

+++

“You see?” Pete asked with a grim smile. “Debbie’s gonna take your man down while I finish you off.”

Repetition guided Buffy as she dealt him two hard blows to the ribs. “Spike is not my man.” Despite her words, one quick look at him, fists and fangs up, brought a flush of pride to her face. “And he’s so gonna kick her ass,” she added. The momentary distraction gave Pete the opening for a good hit to her face, and Buffy’s head reeled back.

“You like that, bitch?” Pete slipped from foot to foot with eager conceit. “In the end, they all fall,” he said as he dodged a roundhouse aimed at his head. “You. Her. You can’t even help yourself. You’re weak.” He marked his last word with a vicious kick to Buffy’s legs that swept her feet from under her. “Always getting in my way.” Buffy’s roll wasn’t quite fast enough to prevent the following kick to her ribs. “Always screwing up my plans.” Another kick caught the side of her head, and she dimly caught Spike’s concerned voice calling her name through the melee. She felt his presence nearing, dragging a kicking, screaming, and half-conscious Debbie clinging to his back across the stone floor.

Pete noticed Spike’s progress too, and the pause in his kicks gave Buffy a second to put her senses together. “You worthless shit,” he yelled out to her. “Can’t you do one thing right?”

When he turned back, Buffy faced him with a stiff glare. “You know, Pete, maybe for once you should focus on the real problem with your plans…” With a deft feint, she pulled alongside him. “You.” Just as she raised her knee to his groin, he gripped her ankle and flipped her off balance.

The action drew Spike’s gaze, and with a final hard thrust, he flung Debbie off his back. “Have you ever once thought of bettering yourself?” he asked the female demon conversationally. “Don’t you want more out of unlife?” As hoped, she threw herself at him with a livid snarl. Turning her momentum against her, Spike pulled her backward against him, hard, arms in position to twist her head from her shoulders. His voice cut through the din just as Pete was set to deliver another beefy kick to Buffy’s head. “Watch it, mate. You touch her again, and I end your girl.”

Pete turned a fraction of an inch, his glowing eyes taking in Debbie’s matted hair, the fat tears slipping down her dirty, blood-streaked face, and Spike’s steady hands around her. When he spoke, it was with a thin, sly smile. “So kill her. She means nothing to me.”

The next moments left a stunned Buffy and Spike in silence. A keening cry of bitterness tore the air as Debbie threw herself at Pete, kicking and biting with inhuman force. “You love me. You do. I know you do.” Her wails grew in force as the two fought, closer and closer to the jagged mass of spined demons lining the nearest wall. “Why can’t you love me? I’ll make you. I’ll make you love me.”

Buffy pulled herself to her feet, and she and Spike stood, feet apart, watching the fight.

Pete’s attempts to force Debbie from him grew more frantic as she pushed him toward the razor sharp points behind him. “You bitch. You’re nothing. You’ll never understand.”

With a last scream, Debbie toppled Pete. Locked in his arms, they fell together, impaled and killed by the dark black shards.

The absolute stillness was shocking in its intensity. Willow, Xander and Anya had dispatched the few demons who hadn’t killed each other or escaped, and together they watched the final moments of Debbie and Pete from a quiet distance. When it was over, the mutual looks of disgust and despair from Buffy and Spike were written clearly in the air. Their eyes met, and for a moment, it seemed a calm strength passed between them.

Spike’s phrase of simple desperation broke the peace. “This has got to end.” With a curt nod to Buffy, he strode from the cavern without looking back.

Buffy’s eyes trailed Spike’s form dimly until the darkness swallowed him whole. When he was gone, Willow stood quietly at her shoulder. “Xander and Anya are gonna go get the car. I’ll call Tara from the house, ok? Let her know we’ll pick up Dawn in the morning?” Buffy only nodded.

The trip back to Revello Drive with Willow, Xander and Anya was as awkward and uncomfortable for Buffy as a year’s worth of secrets and a night’s worth of soul-searching could make it. She just wanted sleep. Didn’t sleep make everything better anyway? No. Only after a night with Spike. That was what made the morning sun seem livable. That was what gave her back heart.

As she trundled up the stairs to her room and settled on her bed, she was disconcerted to see Willow’s slim form slip in behind her and close the door. The red-head settled down stiffly on Buffy’s coverlet. Buffy made a show of yawning widely. Willow studiously ignored it, staring down at the floorboard between her battered shoes.

“Buffy…”

“Hey, Wills. I’m really tired. Thanks for the help back there. Let’s call it a night, ok?”

“Umm. Ok.” Willow’s weight shifted minutely from the bed, only to shift back. “No. Not ok. Buffy, this is not ok.”

Buffy worked at stern nonchalance. “What’s not ok?”

“Well, Xander said he thought… No. Nevermind what Xander thought. That’s not… Look. I know I haven’t been here for you. I mean, the me dragging you out of Heaven thing was bad. And then there was the magic thing. And Dawn. And all of it was on a monumental level of bad. And sometimes I feel like the only way to help you is this monumental level of good. Like I have to save the world all on my own. But what I want more than anything… and hey, I know I don’t get to want things anymore. Don’t deserve it anymore, right? But Buffy, I want this.”

“What do you want, Willow?” Buffy made no effort to polish the exhaustion from her voice.

“I want us. I want us to talk, Buffy. I miss you.” Tears formed in her eyes. “God, I miss you so much. And every day I see you, and I know things aren’t ok, and I just want to ask you what’s wrong so bad that it kills me, but I feel like I don’t have a right to know.”

“Willow…”

“But whether I have a right to know or not, Buffy, I think you need to tell me. Please tell me.” Willow’s tears fell freely now. “Buffy, tell me what’s wrong?”

The only thought in Buffy’s mind as she began to weep was that somewhere, distantly, a dam should be breaking. Roaring flows of wild water should be tearing down fortresses and re-making mountains. Releasing her own guilt and grief was so much quieter. So much simpler. She opened her hands, hands that had clutched so tightly to bitterness for so long. She stared down now into her lined, empty palms. With a few words and broken sobs, she told Willow everything. Everything. And her lost best friend sat and held her as she cried.

+++

The late hour was the least of Tara’s worries as she cautiously moved toward her pounding door. One of the greatest of her worries was that each of the warning spells she’d set around her home was whispering “Vampire.” When she looked through the keyhole and re-classified the warning as “Spike,” she felt relieved, but only for a moment. She opened the door, and the desolate determination in the blonde vampire’s face chilled her to the bone. When he spoke, it was without pleasantries. He planted a hand on the door frame and deeply met her eyes.

“I’ve come to ask a favor.”