“Oh, God, I’m so dead!” Anya moaned, leaning forward and putting her head in her hands as she sat down in the chair across from Dawn’s bed. “You’re gonna get me slayed for sure, Dawnie, I just know it!”

“Buffy’s never gonna know that you had anything to do with all this,” Dawn insisted, shaking her head. “I’m the one who’s *really* risking the wrath of Buffy here! Cause she *is* gonna wanna know how I pulled it off, and I’m not gonna say a word, I swear!”

She paused before pointing out with a shrug, “Besides, anyway, most of the stuff I’m having you do doesn’t even look like magic, anyway. I could probably pull it off myself…in like…ten…years…” Her mouth turned down in a pout, before she shrugged it off and looked back at Anya expectantly, hoping her words were having the desired effect of convincing her to do what she wanted.

“Except the one *really big* magic thing that is very obviously also a *vengeance* thing!” Anya shot back, sounding agitated and upset and more than a little scared.

“Look, Anya,” Dawn went on, softer, finally a little sympathetic as she tried to calm her down. “Even if Buffy *did* find out about this – which she won’t – I *really* don’t think she’d be mad about it. She wants Warren to die a slow, painful death almost as much as I do. She just wants to do it herself. She’s planning on tracking him down and killing him later anyway. All you’re doing is helping me to do it first.”

“And helping you to be in peril of your life, and helping you to commit a felony before you’re even out of high school, and introducing you to dangerous demon types, and…”

“Anya.”

Anya’s anxious little rant cut off suddenly, and she gave Dawn a dubious, mistrustful look.

“Please,” Dawn said softly. “Please just help me do this. For Spike.”

Anya just looked at her for a moment, her expression not changing, before she sighed wearily and glanced at the floor. Dawn had played the one card she knew trumped any that Anya might attempt to use. Looking back up into Dawn’s eyes she replied quietly, defeated, “Okay.”

“So where does this guy live, anyway? This guy I want to see? You said he lives near Sunnydale, right?” Dawn asked, satisfied that Anya was securely back in her camp. “So how am I gonna meet up with him?”

“You don’t need to go to this guy’s place, Dawn. Certainly not alone. He’s dangerous. If you go alone to meet him, you’ll disappear and never be seen again – well, at least, not… all of you at once,” Anya amended, a little grimace on her face.

It was nothing compared to the disgusted, horrified look Dawn gave her at the ghastly comment, spoken so matter-of-factly.

“Well, how else do you suggest I set up a meeting with him, then?” Dawn’s voice was beginning to sound a little irritable.

“Well,” Anya began hesitantly, as if she had a feeling that she would regret sharing this information with Dawn, “there is one place around Sunnydale that he does hang out a lot…”


Buffy and Spike each stood frozen in place as the door shut slowly behind Xander, both of them just trying to take in the magnitude of what had just happened, of the powerful gesture Xander had just made.

Buffy looked cautiously at Spike for a moment, wondering if he was okay. Actually, he seemed better than she’d seen him in a long while. The fire that had long since been quenched by months of systematic, breaking abuse, was back in his eyes. Xander’s words and actions had given him a lot to think about, but had in no way wounded him or added to his trauma.

Buffy knew that Spike was still dealing with a lot, and it would still take some doing for him to completely conquer his fears, but somehow she also knew that he had just taken a huge step toward becoming himself again.

And they had Xander to thank for it.

Buffy turned slowly to look toward the door where her friend had just disappeared. She stared at it for a long moment, her eyes welling with tears at the thought of what he had done. Then, suddenly, she took off out the door, running through the store and out the front door of the Magic Box in a rush of pounding footsteps and jangling bells.

She caught up to him a few yards from the shop, catching him by the arm and spinning him around to face her.

He flinched a little when he saw that it was her, at her firm grip and the hard set of her mouth, despite the fact that her lips were trembling and her eyes were filled with unshed tears.

*Here it comes,* he thought. *She’s about to ream me out good for freaking Spike out again. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t have…*

Buffy just stared at him, her green eyes wide and solemn and brimming with tears. Then, suddenly, she threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly to her in a desperate embrace.

He was struck speechless, partly with shock at her very unexpected actions…and partly with the simple lack of the oxygen necessary to form speech.

“Thank you,” she whispered through her tears. “Xander, thank you so much for what you just did in there!”

Tears welling up in his own eyes, he put his arms around her, smiling a tentative smile over her head. “I couldn’t have done anything else, Buffy. I – I had to…to make up…” He stopped, shaking his head a little. Glancing down at Buffy, who was still hugging him tightly, he asked in a hesitant, cautious voice, “Does…does this mean you don’t hate me anymore?”

“Xander, I don’t hate you,” Buffy said, looking up at him, but not ending her embrace. She had not realized until this moment how very badly she had missed her friend during their recent estrangement. “I never hated you. You did a really stupid, wrong thing…and I was damn mad about it… but I could never hate you, Xander.”

“Good,” he choked out, meeting her gaze with his warm brown eyes. “Um…Buffy… could part of the whole…not hating me thing…be…possibly letting me live? Can’t… breathe…here…”

“Oh, God, Xander, I’m sorry!” she laughed through the tears that streaked her face as she pulled away from him quickly, and he laughed too, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.

He had not done what he had done to get Buffy to forgive him. He had genuinely wanted to help Spike, and ironically, he felt that at the moment he was perhaps the only one with enough understanding of what he had been through to be able to know what it would take to help him overcome it. Considering the part he had played in Spike’s recent regression, it was no more than his responsibility to do what he could to help him.

Buffy’s forgiveness was just a very, very pleasant side effect.

The soft laughter of their reconciliation faded slowly into silence, and his deep, solemn brown eyes searched hers. “I really am so sorry, Buffy,” he told her, his voice quietly imploring.

She stared into his eyes for a moment, the mirth fading out of her own, but finally allowing the warmth and affection she had been blocking out for the past week to show. “I know,” she said quietly with a slow nod of her head. “You’ve proven that today. It’s over, Xander. Let’s just try to forget it and move on.”

He nodded, gratefully, too choked up to reply, blinking back the tears of relief that sprang to his eyes at the blessed mercy of her forgiveness, that for a little while there he had feared he would never find.

“Come on back to the shop with me. We need to get you cleaned up,” she gently urged him, frowning in concern at his battered face as she linked her arm through his and turned them back toward the Magic Box.

“No.” He shook his head emphatically as he gently unentangled his arm from hers. “I think Spike needs a little space from me for a little while. And I *know* my face needs a little space from him!” he pointed out ruefully, touching his bruised eye gingerly.

Buffy smiled sympathetically. “You might be surprised,” she said softly. “I don’t think he’s mad at you at all. What you did back there – that meant a lot, Xander.” She paused, frowning, her eyebrows raised with a hint of attitude in her expression, “But shoving me out of your way like that…”

He felt a touch of apprehension for a moment. He knew it had been too easy; there had to be a catch.

Suddenly her face broke into a smile as she shook her head and finished, “*That* was brilliant.”

He laughed as he tucked his head modestly and said with a little shrug, “He needed a good mad. He hasn’t had one in too long. At least, not one that he could let out. He needed to be able to prove to himself that he can get mad, he can take up for himself, and it’s not gonna lead to total, terrifying badness…you know?”

“I know,” Buffy nodded. “And he really needed to get all that stuff off his chest – to just talk about it some, you know? He’s been holding it all inside ever since he got home, scared to talk about it…”

“And that’s a heck of a lot of mad to hold in,” Xander broke in, shaking his head with a little whistle through his teeth, staring thoughtfully just past her, a grim expression on his face.

Buffy studied his face for a moment, frowning speculatively. “Not that I’m complaining,” she said. “but I’ve just got to ask, Xander. Why the sudden change of heart?”

Xander hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to respond in a way that would be both honest and safe for Anya, before he finally admitted with a little shrug, “Anya.”

“Huh?” Buffy was surprised. “What do you mean?”

“She – she had a long talk with me after that night…the night I brought the term ‘jackass’ to whole new heights? She was pretty ticked at me for that, too. I guess *everybody* was.”

“We were,” she confirmed, smiling a little too brightly at him.

“Thanks for clearing that up,” he said dryly. Then his tone became more serious as he went on, “She helped me to understand. To see where Spike was coming from, from a different perspective.”

“Hmmm,” Buffy said in a voice of mild surprise. She would not have thought that Anya had it in her to be so intuitive. “Go Anya, being all percepto-girl.”

Then she frowned.

“Wait…how did Anya even know what happened?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like you were going off and *bragging* about it!” Suddenly she frowned in disapproval as she asked, “You weren’t, were you?”

“No!” Xander insisted quickly. “Of course not!” But the focus of his thoughts was not really on defending himself at the moment. His stomach dropped as he realized that he had just made a crucial slip.

*Oh, crap.*

“Um, I guess Dawnie must have told her.”

Buffy nodded pensively, remembering Anya standing in her sister’s bedroom earlier. “Yeah, they’ve been getting kind of tight lately, ever since Anya came back to Sunnydale. Anya was over at the house tonight talking to Dawn.”

“She was?” Xander kept his voice calm, unconcerned, but the wheels were beginning to turn in his mind.

Anya, suddenly showing up in Dawn’s room, a matter of minutes after Warren had pulled his cruel little act of mental terrorism with her best friend…Dawn’s threat to Warren on the phone immediately following the incident, which had in no way sounded like idle words…her calm assurance at the Bronze that Warren *would* pay for what he had done to Spike…

Suddenly it all fit together in his head.

Dawn was planning to get her own vengeance on Warren for what he had done. His mind raced with the implications and possibilities. It was a good idea, really, he conceded mentally. Spike had been too emotionally devastated and terrified to wish any harm on Warren himself, he knew. Actually, it kind of seemed like a good way of eliminating Warren as a threat…if Dawn wished wisely.

He knew from experience that vengeance wishes could be very tricky, complicated things, and if one was not careful, they could have unexpected – and decidedly unpleasant – results. And now, in retrospect, as he thought about the way Dawn had been acting lately, some of the things she had said, it worried him, the focus on vengeance that she seemed to have been gradually forming.

He thought for a moment about telling Buffy about his suspicions. After all, Dawn could very well be placing herself not only on emotionally dangerous ground, but putting herself in actual physical danger as well. Although she sometimes didn’t seem like it, especially lately, she was still little more than a child.

But then he thought of Anya – and Buffy’s likely reaction to the idea of Anya’s *helping* Dawn to put herself in such dangers – and shuddered inwardly.

No, he decided suddenly. He trusted Anya. She knew what she was doing, and she would not let Dawn endanger herself. He would keep her secret until he had a much more solid, definite reason not to.

“I guess that’s cool,” Buffy shrugged, and he had to shake himself out of his reverie and remind himself what they had been talking about. “I mean, Dawn had been feeling kind of out of the loop I think, before Spike got back. And I kind of think that Anya *always* felt like that. It might be good for them.”

*Oh, right…Anya and Dawn becoming friends…*

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he answered noncommittally, not quite meeting her eyes.

“Well, anyway,” she said, glancing back toward the Magic Box. “I’d better go see how Spike’s doing.” She laughed softly, looking at the ground for a moment before meeting his eyes again with gratitude. “That was better than any training session I could have put him through.”

She paused, and her eyes became steely as she said, “Do me a favor and get ahold of Will and Tara. We need to meet at my house in…” She glanced at her watch. “…about an hour. It’s time for us to get planning.”

“Sure, Buff. Planning what?” he asked, as always willing and ready for whatever she had in mind.

“We’re finding a way to get rid of that stupid chip. As long as Spike’s got it, Warren can get to him,” Buffy explained. “And then…we’re going to find Warren.”

She didn’t have to say anything else. Her intentions were perfectly clear, and in spite of the fact that probably no one agreed more than Xander with the sentiments that she unknowingly shared with her sister, he felt a chill go down his spine at the cold fury he heard in the Slayer’s voice, and was suddenly very, very glad that he hadn’t taken his intimidation of Spike any further than he had.

He nodded slowly and replied in a voice of quiet agreement, “Okay, Buffy. I’ll gather the troops.”

Buffy nodded in satisfied response. “Good. That power-hungry little creep’s gone free for too long. He deserves to die for what he’s done, but he’s probably not even gonna do any prison time at all. That’s justice for you,” she shrugged with a bitter note in her voice. She paused as she turned back toward the Magic Box and finished in a voice of cold determination, “We’re gonna find him…and I’m gonna give him a taste of real justice.”