Buffy stopped on her front porch, her hand on the doorknob, unable to bring herself to turn the knob and walk inside for a moment, imagining the looks and comments awaiting them on the other side of that door.

She gave Spike a rueful look, but he only smiled back at her innocently. His expression made it obvious that he was not all that concerned with what the others thought of them; the sparkle in his eyes told her that he was actually amused by the whole thing.

“Glad you think this is so funny,” she muttered in good-natured annoyance, before taking a deep breath and plunging forward, opening the door.

In the living room, Willow sat on the couch next to Xander and Dawn, and Tara sat on the floor in front of her, her back resting comfortably between Willow’s knees. Anya stood, a little awkwardly, leaning in the doorway, partially blocking Buffy’s view of the others.

At the sound of the front door opening and quietly closing, the soft sounds of conversation in the living room ceased, and Anya turned around to look at them, moving to reveal the others looking at them, a wide range of expressions displayed on their faces.

Dawn had a knowing smirk on her face; it was all too clear, by her sister’s flustered demeanor and the rumpled clothes they wore, just exactly what had delayed them. She tried to catch her sister’s eye, but Buffy was blushing furiously and wouldn’t look at her. Spike, on the other hand, caught her gaze immediately, just the hint of an amused smile playing about his lips. She raised her eyebrows a few times teasingly at him, and he shot her a playfully warning look.

Xander’s expression was carefully neutral; he had only just been forgiven for his negative attitude and actions toward Spike of the past several years, and wasn’t really sure how to react – what was acceptable. He hadn’t talked to Spike since he had walked out of the training room earlier, and he didn’t want to give either him or Buffy the impression that he was upset by what had obviously gone on between them after he had left. It was their business, and he could honestly say he had no problem with it.

Willow looked a little concerned, but it did not seem to be because Buffy had been off having sex with *Spike*, so much as it was just that Buffy had been off having sex in a semi-public place and when she was supposed to be somewhere else. Xander had told the group that Buffy and Spike were training at the Magic Box, so when they showed up as late as they did, it was perfectly clear what had happened.

Tara just looked embarrassed, but she was trying to suppress a smile.

“Well, I hope you two enjoyed many orgasms while we were sitting here waiting for you,” Anya said sarcastically with an overly bright smile.

Buffy’s face flushed an even deeper shade of red, as she hurriedly walked the rest of the way into the living room, eager to begin this meeting and get the focus onto something besides her and Spike.

“So,” she said brightly, completely ignoring Anya’s comment. “Any ideas so far?”

Tara reached up and squeezed Willow’s hand lightly as she nodded, her smile eager and enthusiastic. “We’ve been thinking about it,” she said in an optimistic tone, trying to help Buffy move the conversation onto more comfortable territory. “We were talking about…maybe a spell?”

Willow nodded, looking hopefully toward Buffy, as always anxious to help her. “There’s this spell to remove the unnatural element from someone…it’s supposed to be for like, people who’ve been poisoned, or are sick with cancer or something…but with Spike, it would probably take out the chip. That’s the…unnatural element…in Spike,” she suggested, her voice faltering a little on the end, as she realized what a long shot the suggestion was.

“There’s that word again…probably,” Spike muttered, giving Buffy a dubious, apprehensive look. “Last time I heard that word in regards to a spell – no offense, Glinda,” he glanced apologetically toward Tara, “but it didn’t go so well for me, love. Sorry.”

“Um…I am probably the last person who should be bringing this up right now,” Xander began slowly, cautiously. “But isn’t Spike kind of…um, unnatural…himself? Just his very existence? I mean, vampires are unnatural. Wouldn’t a spell to remove something unnatural just…”

“Scratch that,” Buffy interrupted quickly, her eyes widening as she followed that train of thought to its unpleasant ending. “Not that spell, then. Any other ideas?”

Willow looked disappointed. “It could work,” she began, but when Buffy shot her a pointed look, she sighed. “We’ll keep looking, I guess,” she gave in.

“We’ll have to,” Buffy said, her voice darkening with worry. “We have to get the chip out as soon as possible.”

“Do you still have any way of getting a hold of Riley?” Tara suggested hesitantly. “He might know someone from the old Initiative who could…”

“No!” Buffy and Spike both spoke at once, firmly.

“No Riley,” Buffy said emphatically.

At the exact same moment, Spike stated firmly with a note of alarm in his voice, “No bloody Initiative!”

Their eyes met for a moment in a meaningful look, before Buffy looked back toward her friends, shaking her head. “There has to be another way,” she said quietly, a note of desperation beginning in her voice.

“We’ll find one,” Willow assured her quickly, wanting to ease her fears. “Tara and I have only just started looking through our spell books. If that spell won’t work for Spike, we’ll find another one that will work.”

“We have to find something,” Buffy said with a sigh. “Until we do, Warren is still a threat to Spike.”

“So…how did Warren get out of jail, anyway?” Tara frowned, confused. “I thought he was arrested for the robberies. Did they let him off?”

“Not yet,” Buffy said in a voice full of barely repressed anger and disgust, as she walked to stand in the doorway near Spike, leaning against the wall with a sigh. “Not completely, anyway. He was arrested, but his lawyer managed to get him out on bond. And we’re talking about armed robbery and murder here. He killed those two security guards. Just the fact that his attorney could get him out on bond at all says something. He’s probably gonna make some kind of deal and get off completely free.”

A heavy silence fell over the room for a moment as they all considered her words. It really was beginning to appear that legally speaking, absolutely nothing was going to be done to Warren for the months of savage torture and abuse he had put Spike through.

The truth was, no one outside this room even knew he had done those things at all. The only hope for legal retribution had been that he would be convicted of the robberies, and that hope was looking slimmer all the time.

Spike said nothing, but he swallowed hard and looked away, and the subtle indication of his feelings about the situation was not lost on Buffy. He was standing very near to her, and she could sense that he needed the comfort of her presence. Silently, inconspicuously, she reached out her fingers to softly intertwine with his in the very small space between them, in a comforting, strengthening gesture that none of the others seemed to notice.

Throughout the entire conversation, Dawn, Xander, and Anya had all been unusually quiet. Anya and Dawn had a knowledge of the situation and how it had yet to play out that was not shared by the others – and Xander was beginning to understand the possibilities, as he glanced at the two conspirators every now and then, his mind racing.

His eyes widened as it slowly began to dawn on him just exactly what the girl and the vengeance demon might have in mind for Warren. He looked closely at Dawn out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting quietly beside him, calmly listening as the others discussed the various options – none of which seemed to be genuinely helpful.

It didn’t really seem to matter, he realized. He was becoming more and more certain all the time that none of the ideas they were tossing back and forth would actually take place. There was a hard determination in Dawn’s young eyes that told him that she would follow through with whatever it was she was planning.

“Okay,” Buffy’s firm, take-charge tone drew Xander’s attention back to the conversation at hand. He could hear the note of fear in her voice that told him she was just desperate to *do* something about the problem, and was having a very difficult time with the utter lack of progress they were making.

“So you two are gonna keep on looking for a spell to get rid of the chip,” she recapped, looking toward Willow and Tara, who nodded their assurance. “And I’m gonna ask around, see what I can find out.”

She paused for a moment, before she went on in a harder voice, “But we still need to find Warren.”

“Um, Buffy,” Willow began hesitantly, her eyes uneasy as they met her friend’s. “What exactly are you planning on doing when we find him? I mean…he’s already been arrested…”

“Yeah, and let go!” Buffy broke in, unable to hide the anger in her voice, though it was not really directed at her friend. “As if it doesn’t even matter what he did!” She paused for a moment, then said in a slightly trembling voice of cold steel, “He’s a killer, Will. He’s killed several people already, and we have no reason to believe he’s gonna stop there…”

“He’s not,” Spike broke in softly, unexpectedly, and Buffy fell silent, turning her eyes on him in mild surprise, waiting for him to go on, as everyone else in the room was doing. All eyes were on him, though he met none of them, as he went on in a quiet, carefully controlled voice, his eyes focused on some point in front of him, deliberately avoiding their curious looks.

“He’s not going to stop. He’s all about power, and control, and…and *proving* how bloody big and strong he is. He’s not just violent when he can actually get something out of it…the violence *is* what he gets out of it. He enjoys it…looks for it…bloody *feeds* off it!” Spike didn’t raise his voice, but as he spoke the intensity of emotion, still under a great effort of control, grew in his tone until it was almost a physical pain to be felt by his listeners. “There’s no real way to make him stop…”

“There’s *one* real way to make him stop,” Buffy broke in, correcting him softly, giving Willow a meaningful look. “And only one way.”

Willow’s eyes widened with the realization of what Buffy was saying, what she intended to do. She could understand Buffy’s desire to punish Warren for what he had done. She knew that if Warren had done anything to hurt Tara, she knew that she would want to hurt him, too.

But that didn’t mean she would resort to murder.

“Buffy,” she began, alarm in her cautious voice. “you can’t just…”

“I can. And I will,” Buffy interrupted, her voice a little harsher than she had intended it to be. “This is a case where the justice system is obviously gonna fail. They’re gonna let him get away with this.” She stopped for a moment before going on in a cold voice. “I’m not.”

Willow was silent; it was obvious that she was very troubled by Buffy’s words, by her shocking intentions, but knew her well enough to know that she was not going to be dissuaded from her plan easily, and at the moment was not in a mood to discuss it. She glanced toward Xander, hoping to catch his eye. The two of them would have to have a talk about this, figure out some way to make Buffy see reason before she did something that would change her life forever.

“Buffy’s right.”

Xander’s quiet, firm words stunned Willow, and she did a little double take. “*What*?” she gasped in dismay and disbelief.

“She’s right,” he said, meeting her eyes with resolve. “Warren’s not gonna stop unless someone stops him. Until someone does something about him, not only is Spike in danger, but so is anyone else who crosses his path and happens to make him mad.”

“But just killing him,” Willow argued, shaking her head. “That can’t be the way! There has to be…”

“He hurt Dawn,” Xander broke in, and the words stunned Willow to silence for a moment.

The eyes of the Slayer and the vampire shot to Xander instantly in surprise and rising anger.

“What?” Spike said, his voice low and almost a growl, his eyes sparking golden flame, intent on Xander and his explanation.

“That night when you all went to the Bronze,” Xander went on, meeting Spike’s gaze without backing down. “Warren was there. Dawn…tried to get him to leave. And he pushed her into the wall. He was gonna hit her. Just because she said something he didn’t like.”

Buffy’s green eyes were blazing with fury as she looked to her sister for confirmation of the truth of his words, and found it in her guilty, trapped expression. Spike’s gaze was still focused on Xander; he didn’t wonder in the slightest about the truth of the matter. One thought reverberated again and again in his head, building in intensity at the very thought of the sick, sadistic monster he knew too well, laying a single hand on his precious little Bit.

*I’ll kill him…I’ll kill him for touching her…I’ll never, never let him hurt her…*

“He’s dangerous,” Xander said softly, stating the point he had been trying to make by bringing up the incident at the Bronze. “It doesn’t matter who the person is, how defenseless they are…Warren is a twisted little sociopath who doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself and what he wants…and he won’t stop until he’s dead.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Spike muttered, his voice heavy with memory and quiet with barely restrained rage.

Willow did not say anything, just sat there staring at the coffee table, trying to process it all. The very thought of it was still disturbing to her, but she couldn’t find a valid argument for the points Xander had raised.

“I was hoping you could help me track him down. Find out where he lives,” Buffy said, her voice quiet and even as she searched her friend’s eyes, an imploring look in her own – imploring not so much for her help as for her understanding. “I mean…if you don’t want to, I’ll understand…and I won’t be mad or hold it against you. I can find him myself if I…”

“I’ll help you find him,” Willow interrupted softly, her eyes not leaving her focus point on the coffee table. She said nothing else, and Buffy did not feel it wise to push the point any farther at the moment.

After a few more minutes of subdued conversation in which not much was really established as far as a real plan of action, the little meeting broke up. Willow and Tara headed out to the car, and it was clear by the troubled expression on Willow’s face and the glances they were exchanging that they were going to discuss the matter further on the way home.

Spike seemed troubled as well, after the conversation, which had both fed his fears and brought his painful memories to the surface. But it had also further fanned the flames of anger rising in his heart toward the one who had placed that fear and pain there. Buffy could tell that he had a lot on his mind, and that for once he was feeling the need to talk about it. Within a matter of moments, they had excused themselves and disappeared upstairs to her bedroom.

An odd, awkward silence fell over the three remaining people standing in the living room – Dawn, Xander, and Anya.

After a moment, Anya said too cheerfully with a big, bright smile, “Well, I’m gonna head back to the motel now. See you later, Xander.”

Dawn walked with her to the door, and as he picked up his jacket and put it on, Xander tried not to look as if he was trying to hear their whispered exchange as Anya stood on the front porch, Dawn standing in the doorway and talking to her. It wasn’t hard to pretend, as they were speaking so quietly that he really couldn’t make out a word they were saying.

But as Dawn stopped talking, Anya’s response was unmistakable, even from where he stood across the room. He had seen and heard it leave her mouth enough times that he could read the single word on her lips as she whispered her response.

“Granted.”