Disclaimer: All hail Joss.

Author’s note: Thanks to the great Bloodytearsoflife for the betaing Thanks to everyone who has been waiting patiently for updates.
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Chapter 4: Take it Back

Buffy arrived home in an instant and put the kettle on for tea, got out the balloons she had been hiding in closets and started to set out nibblies for snacking once the group got back home. Buffy raced up the stairs and checked to make sure that Willow and Tara’s room was still immaculate as they had left it.

All the while she was trying to come up with an excuse to explain how she’d gotten home faster than Dawn.

What about the truth? she asked herself.

Buffy came out of Tara and Willow’s room contemplating that thought when Dawn opened her bedroom door. The teen nearly jumped three feet into the air, her hand covering her mouth that no doubt would have let out a glass of shattering scream.

“Holy crap, Buffy! How did you get home so fast?” Dawn asked, waiting for an answer as she felt her heart race a mile a minute.

“Um, I can teleport?” Buffy offered weakly.

“Since when?”

“Since I’m more than just a Slayer...”

“Since that thing with the scythe?”

“No, before then,” Buffy answered sheepishly. “There’s a lot about the magic I can do that I haven’t told any of you. I should have, I know. But there was Willow’s problem...” Dawn gave her sister a sharp glare. “Not an excuse, I know,” continued Buffy. “I don’t flaunt it, I’ve had it for a long time, I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”

“It’s a freakin’ big deal Buffy!” shrieked Dawn.

There was a puff of smoke and Anya appeared, clutching a bag of Cajun fiesta Doritos. “I brought munchies!” the vengeance demon greeted. Anya took a look between Dawn’s angry face and Buffy’s sheepish look and drew her own conclusions. “I told you to tell her before!” noted Anya.

“Anya knew!” shrieked Dawn again.

“I knew!” Anya yelled back. “Where do you want me to put the chips?” asked the vengeance demon to the former but more than slayer.

“I’ll get you a bowl,” bubbled Buffy, eager to leave her sputtering sister behind.

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could have been the fun super power sisters!” Dawn whined, trailing behind her.

Buffy rounded the kitchen island and grabbed an empty bowl out of a cupboard. “Maybe cause I wanted you to be all special? I’ve been super power girl for a long time Dawnie. Maybe it was time to let you have the spot light?” reasoned the eldest Summers.

Dawn plopped down on a nearby stool, her elbows on the island, a pout on her face. “I hate it when you are all smart and wise.”

“Ya, it’s a syndrome. It comes with age. Just make sure you never grow up or you know, learn anything, cause that would really suck.”

“I think it’s ironic that the oldest person in this kitchen is being lectured by the youngest about being old and grown up,” piped up Anya, pouring her chips into the bowl.

Dawn reached for a chip. “Well this sixteen year old girl/ older than time key has had enough of being the baby Scooby. When is Molly getting here? When does she get the ‘I’ve been doing this longer than you, I have to protect you’ speech?” asked Dawn.

“I’ll sit her right down and give it to her as soon as she walks in the door,” Buffy very seriously intoned.

Dawn gave her sister a half smile. “So are there like other things you can do, besides the magic? and the teleporting? Can you fly?” asked Dawn eagerly.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “No, Dawn, I can’t fly. And you don’t need to go spreading this to everyone either.”

“You can’t seriously think I’d keep this a secret. Buffy this is big stuff! Even Willow can’t teleport without a nosebleed.”

“That is true,” noted Anya. “Your teleportation skills are quite advanced for someone who has not had the longest track record. I know it was several years before I could even teleport with accuracy. And Willow is very lucky to get nosebleeds and headaches. I’ve known witches who have tried teleportation only to have their heads explode.”

“Ewww,” observed both the Summers sisters.

“Dawn, please. No telling anyone tell I say it’s okay? Please?”

“Fine,” Dawn huffed. “Spoil all my fun…”

“I personally think you should tell Spike though, I have had quite a few spontaneous orgasms due to teleportation sex play. I highly recommend it,” continued Anya.

“Anya!” protested Buffy, even as Dawn was putting her hands over her ears and singing to herself.

“La la la, I can’t hear you,” sang Dawn as she got up off the stool and sprang towards the stairs and her room.

Anya watched the retreating teen. “I wonder when she’ll get over her fear of orgasms? I bet she hasn’t had any proper ones. She is sixteen. In my day I was already living with Olaf and having boring Baltic sex by then. We should marry her off!” gasped Anya as if a splendid thought occurred to her.

“ANYA!” shouted Buffy, trying to get her friends attention. “We are not marrying off Dawn and that is final.”

“It was just a thought,” muttered Anya, disappointed her idea was rejected.
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Music was playing, munchies were set out and balloons and streamers graced various areas of the Summers’ house when the Ford Explorer parked in the driveway. Anya looked up from her bowl of chips and rolled her eyes when she saw that Xander was the first person to enter the house.

His notice of course was diverted to Buffy, who, by all evidence presented to him, had been home for a while.

“B..Buffy!” started Xander, surprised at his friend’s appearance in her own house.

“Xander...stop gaping at Buffy and carry Tara and Willow’s bags like a gentleman, oh wait, sorry, I had you confused with someone else,” declared Anya.

“Spike...Giles...Buffy! How did you get home so fast?” stammered Xander, standing in the middle of the open doorway, blocking the entrance.

He was quickly joined by Tara and Willow, standing behind him wondering just why he had stopped right there.

“Xander? Uh, we kinda need in. All grr from the flight and the fact that my body thinks it’s almost tomorrow morning. Move!” ordered Willow.

Xander shuffled out of the way and let Willow and Tara in, followed by Giles and Spike, carrying their bags. Willow took one look at the decorations and the ‘Welcome Home Willow and Tara’ sign and burst into tears.

Buffy rushed to hug her friend, and found that Willow was the creamy filling in a Scooby Twinkie. Slowly the layers of Scooby backed away letting Willow have space.

“She’s just really tired,” Tara explained. “It’s nice that you planned a party for us, but we should really go to sleep. Neither of us slept on the plane.”

Buffy nodded. “I thought you would anyway.”

Hugs were exchanged, and Spike took up Tara and Willow’s bags to their room. Willow and Tara followed him up and shut the door behind them. Returning to the kitchen, Spike found an unusually broody bunch.

“There’s something wrong with her,” noted Xander, bluntly. “She didn’t talk at all in the car. Willow is not like that.”

“Once again, you are jumping to conclusions, Xander,” chastised Giles, as Buffy poured him a cup of tea.

“Or maybe she’s all bummed out about you and your ‘I’m thinking about going back to England’ announcement,” continued Xander. “She just got back and you are abandoning her!”

“You’re ...you’re going back to England?” asked Buffy. This was the first she had heard of it.

“Not permanently. I’ve got a friend celebrating her fiftieth birthday, there’s a rather large gathering planned. I had intended on going,” explained Giles.

“Oh,” said Buffy relieved. “Then why are you so grr about it Xander?” Buffy asked, turning to her friend.

“Cause, he’s reactionary,” butted in Anya, snacking on her Doritos.

Xander pulled a bowl of cheezies towards him and started munching, glaring at his ex fiancée, and for the first time in his life, not saying anything.
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It was only an hour later that Giles, Xander and Anya went back to their respective homes. The welcome home party without Willow and Tara was pretty blah. Xander offered the excuse of work in the morning, which Giles agreed with.

“Can I expect the mighty Anyanka to stop by the humble magic shop?” Giles asked in an uncharacteristic amount of sarcasm.

Anya smiled and nodded. “Of course! I am always ready to participate in the acquisition of currency!”

Giles smiled back, a motion that did not go unnoticed by Buffy. Suddenly Buffy had an idea of just who Anya’s date had been the week before.

The house now empty of extra Scoobies, Spike suggested patrolling.

Patrolling had been slow over the summer, the odd vampire nest and demon sacrifice, no apocalyptic events, as was the norm for Sunnydale. Badness seemed to happen in the spring and then start up again in the fall.

Well, fall was here, so the badness, it was a comin’. Course the flesh eating demon thing they killed a couple of days ago was probably just the start.

Clad in her new leather pants, cause there was the absolute need to break them in, Buffy stashed a couple of stakes about her clothes and followed her mate into the darkness in search of baddies to kill.

Spike was curiously silent as they traversed the green spaces of the local cemeteries watching Buffy with a more than usual protectiveness. By the time they had entered cemetery number four, Buffy had had enough.

“What!” she barked.

“It’s a feeling, pet, something’s not quite right here.”

Buffy sighed. Since her thing with the scythe and releasing the power of it to make only one slayer, and her transformation into not a slayer but something a little less, Buffy had discovered that she’d been stripped of her ability to ‘sense’ stuff. She knew Spike was near because of their link as mates, but the rest of the vampires where just bodies to her decreased senses. “Tell me about the feeling, Spike,” she asked softly.

“Too quiet, vamps and demons, it’s like they are scared. I haven’t felt this mood since, well, since Whitebread and his tin soldiers were about.”

Buffy scanned the area for any signs of what Spike said was true. She agreed that it was far too quiet, not only that, there was a black SUV parked outside the gates of the cemetery that she didn’t like. Buffy looked back up at her mate and pulled him into a kiss. “I think the Initiative is back,” she whispered.
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Buffy settled back into her bed, covers pulled up around her, as she watched Spike get ready for bed. He was gorgeous, and she couldn’t help but stare at him. She had let the Initiative's reappearance in Sunnydale slip her mind after they got back home. Spike was chip free, thanks to her fun magic abilities, but there was nothing stopping them from chipping her vampire again. She was not going to let them do that again though.

“So you gonna tell me just how you got back from the airport so quickly?” he asked quietly, folding his jeans and setting them on a chair.

“Teleportation,” she said straight faced. “It’s the first time I’ve used it since Willow’s spell, when I was brought here. I just didn’t mention it. It comes with the whole harnessing of the slayer powers. The ability to do magic and stuff.”

Spike raised the side of the covers and slipped in beside her.

“It never came up until today?” he asked.

“No,” she confirmed. “Dawn was kinda mad that I didn’t tell her.”

Spike wrapped his arms around her. “I can understand that. She’s never in the know, out of the loop. She likes knowing the ins and the outs.”

Buffy turned towards him, the covers rustling as she did so. “You aren’t mad at me for not telling?” she asked, watching his reaction carefully.

Softly Spike shook his head. “No, love, I’m not. Not crazy about magic, you know that, bleedin’ consequences and all. Next time we go to the bleedin’ airport we are taking two cars though.” Spike reached over to turn off the bedside light, but was halted by Buffy’s gaze. It was the curious way she was looking at him that made him pause.

“What?”

“I love you,” she said tenderly.

“But...”

“What? But what? There’s no but! But free here!” she protested.

Spike raised himself up on an elbow and looked at her hard. “It seems to me that this isn’t the only thing that you’ve got to say. What were you thinking about just now?”

Buffy bit her lip. She hadn’t wanted to say much about it, it wasn’t important now. He didn’t need a soul. She loved him without it.

“I was thinking that I love you and that I was a fool before to think that you needed a soul to love,” she whispered.

Spike rolled back on his back. “I bloody could have told you that.”

“And you did,” she observed, sitting up. “Time and time again. But I didn’t listen.” Buffy turned to look at her fiancé, then snuggled down next to him. “I did it better this time. This time I have you. This time I won’t take you for granted. This time no crazy souled Spike.”

“Crazy souled Spike?” he asked but his slayer was already asleep.
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Spike couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, his mate lying calmly beside him, sleeping. Her last comment before she drifted off, had bothered him, perplexed him.

Crazy souled Spike

He couldn’t reason himself into any situation where he thought he’d have to get a soul. He gazed at his partner and a sudden thought occurred to him. The only reason he’d ever consider getting a soul was if he’d hurt Buffy.

She breathed sleepily and burrowed into his side, knowing that he needed comfort even while she slept.

He suppressed a growl. He wasn’t the Spike that had hurt Buffy: that was some other Spike in some other time reality. It hurt his head trying to think about it.

He was still awake when Buffy woke up to make sure Dawn had breakfast before heading to school. He watched her dress, her graceful form making his body react in very pleasant ways.

“Why did I get a soul, Buffy?” he asked out of the blue, startling the Master Slayer as she was putting a leg through a pant leg.

Buffy regained her balance and zipped up, exhaling a deep intake of air.

“You hurt me, emotionally. Not that I didn’t deserve it, to be hurt emotionally. I’d done more than that to you. You knew what I was like before I popped into this body. I didn’t want to be here and I took it out on you. For that I’m so sorry.”

“I hurt you and I decided to get a soul?” he asked.

Buffy nodded. “Don’t you go start feeling bad about it!” she chastised. “You didn’t do anything!”

“Not yet, pet,” he replied softly.

“No! Not ‘yet.’ Not ever. You couldn’t hurt me Spike.”

Spike whipped back the covers of the bed and sat up. “Well apparently I did!”

“It wasn’t you!” she started.

“No, maybe not, but it could have been. I’d hate myself if I hurt you. And don’t you start on about the ‘emotional’ bit. Can tell the way you say it, it wasn’t just emotional...”

Buffy slipped on a tank top and approached the bed.

“I love you,” she said tenderly.

Spike opened his mouth to continue, but she raised a hand effectively stopping him.

“I love you, I forgave that Spike a long time ago and you’re brooding,” she warned, smiling.

Spike’s eyes went wide. “You take that back!”
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tbc...