REAP THE WHIRLWIND
by perletwo
"HEY! Can we get a doctor in here already?!" Spike rattled the metal rings against the steel rod holding up the curtain partitioning Dawn from the other patrons of the Sunnydale Medical Center's emergency room. Dawn just stared glassily past him from her exam table.
A nurse poked her head around the curtain."Problem?"
"She needs a doctor, she was in a car accident -"
"Are you a relative?" The nurse's hands settled on her hips.
"Her sister's right behind us, she'll get the paperwork started -"
"Listen, if you're not a relative, you can't be in here -" Spike lifted his upper lip and emitted a feral growl that took the nurse aback.
"He's my sister's boyfriend," Dawn cut in with an exaggerated precision that told Spike she was fighting down pain. "Our parents are dead, we don't have any other family. Let him stay." The nurse harrumphed once and huffed off. "Sorry, I know you'd rather earn that one yourself, but..."
"Hey, whatever works. You okay, li'l bit?" Spike pulled the curtain and turned his attention to the injured girl.
"My arm's broken, I think..." She went very pale suddenly, and after drawing a momentary blank Spike nudged her down on the table, found some folded-up sheets in a cabinet and tucked a stack of them under her knees to elevate her feet. "ohboy... this hurts like hell..." He smoothed her hair back off her cheek.
"Dawn? You think you can focus for a bit?" She looked at him closely. "Could you answer some questions for me, about what happened to you tonight?" She nodded. "I need to know as much as you can tell me about what led up to the accident."
"We were supposed to go to dinner an' a movie...I was cooking myself something when she invited me, but....Willow was all hyper an' jumpy an'...just weird..." He nodded, stroking her hair encouragingly. "We had dinner...she just kept getting more 'n more fidgety, if I hadn'a been watching her eat I'd'a thought she'd been drinking...We were gonna go to the movie, but Will wanted to go through these back alleys, an' it was like she was looking for something...Finally she found this, this forcefield thingie, like on Star Trek? And she said it was OK an' I should come in with her, she'd only be a minute..."
Dawn's voice was growing more and more strained, and he squeezed her good hand reassuringly. "And she wasn't?"
"Nuh-uh. *Hours.* I still thought we could make the movie, so I jus' stood there... in this cheesy place, like one of those paneled basements old houses from like the Fifties sometimes have?, - an' watched the clock. I could hear...weird stuff...from the room Willow went into, and I got more n' more scared...then this, this really creepy guy came in and started talking to me and he wasn't making any sense, I thought he was maybe strung out, but..."
"Did you see anyone else in there, li'l bit?" She shook her head just as Buffy and the doctor walked in. Buffy glared daggers at Spike as the doctor shooed them out of the exam cubicle.
"What d'you think you're doing, interrogating Dawn when she's injured?" she demanded. "She needs to rest, not play Crime Story with you!"
"I'm *trying* to help her, Slayer. To help you." Buffy just stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "You know what? Never mind. Just take care of the little bit. Tell 'er I love 'er, an' I got things I gotta do." He stalked off, the tail of his black leather coat snapping at his heels.
Buffy just gaped at his retreating form, only startling out of it when the doctor called her into the exam room.
Tara came to the door of her new apartment in her sweats, wringing water out of her hair with a towel, when it became clear the insistent knocking wasn't going to quit.
"Don't bother inviting me in, you're comin' out," Spike said as the surprised girl opened her mouth to speak. "We got work. There's a warlock up to some very bad mojo we need to go roust outta town."
"I w-was just going to bed, I've got an early class tomorrow," she protested. "And b-besides, if it's going to get heavy, you'd probably rather have Willow with you." An edge of bitterness crept in along with the sadness in her voice.
"Red's not part of the solution, ducks." Succinctly and with no punches pulled, he outlined the night's adventures.
Tara paled. "Five minutes."
"Time's a'wastin' here, Tara..."
"Three minutes." She shut the door firmly in his face, and he leaned against the jamb and lit a cigarette, cupping his free hand around the gold lighter.
"I really wish we could ask Willow in on this," Tara said softly from her pace behind Spike, face grave. "She's so much better at using magick in these combative kinds of situations..."
"Or worse, as the case seems t'be." Spike exhaled a mouthful of smoke, which ghosted around his head and wafted back to Tara, who waved it away with the flat of her hand.
"It hasn't done her much good, apparently. Spiritually, I mean," she said. "I hoped my leaving would be a wake-up call for her...OK, I know, down to business, Big Bad. Don't get all tense. I need more information before we can hit this guy Rack. You said Buffy mentioned Amy when she brought up his name?" Spike nodded.
"Then that's where we go first." The vampire stepped aside and waved Tara into his path ahead of him, bowing slightly.
Amy screamed as the door to her motel room came crashing open, and a snarling blond vampire burst through. Spike grabbed her by the front of her shirt and slammed her back into the wall. "What did Rack do with Willow, li'l rat?"
Eyes wide and darting, Amy stiffened her spine. "You can't hurt me," she hissed. "Willow told me."
"I don't have to, pet." He turned his head back to look over his shoulder, and it gave Amy a clear view of Tara, who'd entered the room calmly and quietly behind him. She was whispering intensely and her eyes had turned liquid black. At her nod Spike stepped slightly to the side, keeping his grip on Amy, and a bolt of electricity arced from Tara to Amy, shooting through the dark-haired girl's entire body and firing off sparks through her skin.
"That's y'r basic truth spell there, li'l rat," Spike spat. "Now tell me what *exactly* your daddy did with Willow."
Amy smiled, eyes glowing with an unnatural light, and the electricity absorbed harmlessly into her skin. "Try again," she hissed.
"Or we can try something altogether different. Not for you, though." Spike turned back to Tara again, who'd conjured another ball of energy in her hands. Tara smiled grimly.
"You know what this is, Amy? It's a transmogrification spell. Maybe you remember it." Amy paled. "Now, unless you want to spend the rest of your life running around a Habitrail, tell us what we want to know!"
"Or, hey, don't if you like," Spike purred. "Once you're a rat again I can do more than 'urt you." He smiled, a feral gleam in his eyes. "I can *eat* you."
A strangled sound from behind him made him turn back to Tara, and the twisting of her facial muscles told him she was trying desperately not to burst out laughing. He glared at her, and screwing her face up further, she snarled, "TELL US!"
Amy jumped from fright, and began to babble frantically.
"Word of advice, ducks? Nex' time you go into a combat situation? Try *not* to get the giggles," Spike said sternly once they were clear of the motel parking lot. "Undercuts y'r ability to intimidate the opposition, y'know?"
That caused the dam to burst, and deep, loud laughter pealed out from Tara. "Sorry sorry-sorry-sorry-" she spluttered. "Just - when you said - I got this *flash* - last summer - the day Willow told you, why exactly you couldn't eat her rat - " Her voice got lost in laughter again for a few minutes. "The *look* - on your *face!* - ohh, if you could've *seen* yourself -"
Shaking his head at the absurdity of it all, Spike laughed along with her until she got her breathing back under control. Her lush face had gone pink and glowy with the pleasure of letting the laugh go, and he had to admit to himself she was a lovely woman, even if she didn't seem aware of it.
"Are you okay?" She reached a gentle hand to his temple. "You were throwing her around pretty good in there..."
" 'M fine. I didn't even come close to hurtin' 'er." He flinched as soon as the words left his mouth, and Tara's heavy-lidded eyes clouded with concern.
"Spike? 'D'jyou know, I can still see auras sometimes, like I could when Glory got inside my head? When the emotions are really strong?" she asked gently.
"No fun f'r you," he barked, turning away from her abruptly. "Not while y'r runnin' around with me, anyways."
Tara ran a hand comfortingly along his bicep, then took his hand and pulled him along beside her. "C'mon. There's things I need at the Magic Box."
The tall girl paced outside the door to the magic shop, agitated. "Maybe if I call Anya..."
Spike came around the corner with a large steel trashcan, and slammed it into the door, breaking it half off the hinges. Tara jumped. "You can bust me to Anya later."
Both hurried into the shop. Tara began leafing through spellbooks, pulling items off shelves and asking Spike to do the same.
"I'm sorry this is taking so long," she said as she stuffed things into her crocheted rucksack. The vampire shrugged.
"What happened to Mr. Time's-a-Wastin?" she asked, running her fingertips along the edge of an upper shelf as she looked.
"I understand about primin' your weapons for battle, ducks." She nodded as her fingertips encountered what she needed.
Pulling it down, she stuffed the large glass globe into her rucksack. Scanning several pages in the spellbooks again, she mumbled, "I'm almost ready."
With a nod, he disappeared into the training room, returning a few moments later with an armload of weapons. He shrugged out of his coat, arrayed the weapons by straps over his shoulders, and pulled the coat back on over them.
He glanced over Tara's shoulder, reading the note she was writing. 'Anya - I needed some things for a spell, it's an emergency, I'll settle up with you tomorrow. Tara.'
"Not gonna bust me then, Ducks?" She shook her head and slung her bag over her shoulder, and side by side they headed back out into the night.
Pacing in the living room, Buffy was surprised to hear Dawn on the stairs. "Hey! You're s'posed to be in bed, Dawnie!" She hurried halfway up the staircase to steady the girl, mindful not to bump her new cast.
" 'M okay. I jus' took a pain pill, made me kinda woozy is all. No pain though..." She swayed, and Buffy got her quickly off the staircase. "Hadda ask you..."
"Go ahead..." Buffy stroked her hair gently.
"Why'd you make Spike go away?" Buffy flinched, but said nothing. "I heard you guys...yelling...when the doctor was examining me..."
"We weren't yelling," Buffy said weakly.
"Tryin' not to. But I...could tell...you sounded like Mom 'n Dad used to..." Tears came into her older sister's eyes. "Buffy, he...he wasn't doin' anything wrong...I *liked*...havin' him there..."
"Dawn -"
"...He used to hang out here with me...lots, when you were...I thought...he'd really got to liking me...but I guess I was just, like...a chore or somethin'...'cause he stopped comin'...once you came back..."
Spike's parting words leapt into her mind. "He loves you, Dawn," she said gently. "He said so tonight." Dawn stared at her blankly, and she explained. "When he left. He said to tell you he loves you, and he had things he had to go do."
" 'N you didn't tell me?" Dawn squeaked as tears came up in her eyes.
"I just told you, didn't I?" Buffy smiled, trying for comforting. "You've been pretty zoned out tonight, I don't know if you've noticed..."
"Buffy?" She let the smile drop. "D'you think Spike's gonna hurt me?" She shook her head. "D'you hate him?" Looking down at the floor, Buffy shook her head again, once.
"Then why'd'you keep makin' him go away? He loves you, Buffy...so *much*...if you coulda seen him...how he was, when you were...gone...Doing right by you...honoring your memory...it was all he lived for back then..." Dawn swayed again and her knees buckled.
Buffy caught her quickly. "Whoa! Bedtime for *you,* kiddo. Whatever they gave you, I think I want some..." She half-steered, half-carried the girl up to her room.
Spike and Tara burst through the cloaking spell into an empty wood-paneled rec room. Tara threw a handful of dust and shouted an incantation, and the second invisibility spell that had fooled Willow earlier shredded away, revealing the twitchy, strung-out boy Dawn had spoken to on one couch and two desperately thin, wasted teenage girls slumped on the other, clutching their sides in discomfort.
Game face on, Spike grabbed the boy and hurled him out through the cloaking field into the street. "GO! NOW!" he shouted at the girls and started toward them, snarling, fangs bared. They fled in terror, and Spike rushed the door to the back room, Tara at his heels.
The vampire had leapt upon Rack before the warlock had a chance to react. "Give us back what you took from Willow," he snarled, fangs at the man's throat, before a spell sent him flying backwards into the opposite wall.
"Aah. Friends of Strawberry's. You really think a *thing* like you can hurt me?" Rack growled, eyes glazing over as if mercury had been poured into their sockets.
"*I* can hurt you," said Tara, voice soft but steely as she stepped fully into the room.
Her own eyes were liquid black and open very wide, and lightning flashed from her hands towards him. A matching lightning bolt met and clashed with it in midair, the two spells canceling each other out and dissipating harmlessly, charging the air with a haze of ozone and power.
"Ah! Now *this* is interesting..." With a wave of his hand, a glowing rift appeared in midair and five demons surged out of it. Pulling a sword out of its sheath from under his coat, Spike leapt into battle with an inhuman howl.
Tara was radiating an unearthly light as magickal power built up within her, lips moving constantly as she whispered spells and incantations. As Spike dispatched the last demon, she released a wave of energy at Rack, which tore through his protection spells and charred his arm almost to bone as he held it up defensively.
"Fine. You want my taste of little Strawberry?" Deep red fire sparked around his hands. "Take it, then." The fireball surged from his hands at Tara, and Spike dropped to the floor and grabbed her rucksack. He thrust the heavy crystal globe up into the path of the fireball just before it reached her, shuddering and holding on desperately as the recoil from the power striking the magickal artifact kicked through his body.
By the time his shudders stopped, it was all over. The sound and fury had vanished, leaving a hollow silence that made his ears ring. He looked up to find that Rack had disappeared, leaving the charmarks on the shag carpet that indicated a dimensional portal had opened and closed where he'd stood.
Above him, Tara was clutching the globe, now glowing with a greenish-yellow energy, to her midsection, body curled around it protectively. She was shaking so hard he thought her knees might start knocking.
Spike rose, collected Tara's rucksack and put an arm around her shoulders. "C'mon, Ducks. Let's go home."
Tara sat on Spike's couch examining the globe in her hands, while her host fussed with a pot of water over a Sterno can/steel-framed burner setup. Once it boiled, he mixed it with a couple of tablespoons of cocoa and set a cup of the rich brew on the table in front of her. Then he sat down beside her, examining her face in profile but saying nothing.
"It's no good," she said finally, passing him the globe. "Can you feel it?"
Spike gingerly turned the Orb of Thessalus around in his palms. The glow waxed and waned with the motion of his hands. His vampire senses, attuned to the paranormal, felt the distortions around the edges of the field of light within the crystal, and the longer he held it the stronger he perceived a taste/smell of sour milk at the back of his palate and around the edges of his tongue. He nodded, once, face grim.
"He's ruined it." Tara reached over and took back the orb that held part of Willow's soul locked within it, a part of her lover now thoroughly corrupted. "This was all for nothing."
"Not nothing, luv," the vampire said, rubbing her back, comforting. "At least *he* hasn't got it anymore."
Tara nodded, numb to everything, his stroking hand, even to the tears welling in her eyes.
"Is there some way we could maybe clean it? A spell? Purify it enough to give back to her?"
"I don't know. Maybe. We'd need a very powerful witch, though. Much more powerful than me." Spike flashed on an image of Tara, eyes black and whole body lit up with fire from within at the height of the night's battle, and doubted the truth of her statement. But he said nothing as she continued her musings. "It's a shame Willow's spells wouldn't work when it's her own soul; the spiritual energies would register as the same and just absorb...but I bet she could do it, if it wasn't..."
"Should we tell her? Let her see if she can find someone?" he asked.
Tara shook her head. "I - I think I'm too close to it, too close to *her,* to make the right decision. My own emotions, my own desires and, and ambitions for her, they get in the way of seeing what's best for her." She looked up from the globe and turned to meet his eyes. "I need to go home, decompress, meditate on this...I'm all out of balance, Spike. I've got to get myself re-centered before I can make a decision this big. But I don't trust myself to have this in my possession while I'm getting there. Can you hold onto it here? For safekeeping, until I decide how best to handle it?"
{{And that's why you're the right person to make this call an' not Willow,}} Spike thought. "Yeah. I got some of Dru's old spellbooks around here, I can put some protection spells around it, keep it locked up tight for ya." Tara smiled wanly, leaned over and kissed his cheek, and rose from the couch.
"You're a good friend, Spike. Despite yourself."
He shrugged and rose to walk her to the door. "Tonight was fun. Lettin' loose. Anytime you wanna raise some hell again, gimme a call." That got a tiny chuckle out of the shy girl as she left the crypt.
Spike dug a cube-shaped lockbox of heavy oak out of the back corner of an old steamer trunk. Drucilla had had it made sometime in the 1930s in Vienna, to hold the preserved head of a lover who'd displeased her. They'd lost the head somewhere along the way in one of their mad flights from capture, but Spike had liked the hand-carved box, and so cleaned and kept it. It no longer even smelled of his rival, whose name he couldn't even remember.
He carefully lined and padded it with strips cut from an old velvet evening gown of Dru's he found in the same trunk, midnight blue, and set the Orb of Thessalus inside. A little more digging in the trunk produced a spellbook, and he sat down to study the spell he wanted.
When he found it, he read through it four times, rolling it around in his mind until he was certain he understood what to do, how to do it and what kind of forces he'd be invoking, then set about gathering the ingredients for the spell.
Once he had them, he read it through one more time, started to get out of the chair and sat back down, flipping through the book until he was sure he'd found and marked a counterspell. Only then did he rise, close and lock the box, and with a halting voice cast the protection spells to seal it fast and preserve its contents from damage.
Once the spell was completed and the last wisps of smoke from the burned sage had died away, the door to the crypt crashed open.
" 'Allo, Slayer, come right in. Make yourself at home," Spike said as she stalked into the living area. "Oh. You already did."
At her icy glare he sobered. "What's wrong? Is Dawn -"
"She's fine," Buffy cut in, sitting down on the couch in the spot Tara had recently vacated. "She's sleeping off the drugs they gave her. Willow's with her." Buffy grimaced a little at the last words.
Spike shrugged, lit a cigarette. "So what brings you by, then?" She'd completely overlooked the untouched cup of cocoa and the oak box on the coffee table, he noticed. So much for the vaunted Slayer-enhanced senses.
"Dawn...had some things to say to me tonight, after we got home. About how shitty I've been treating you lately. And about how you've pretty much disappeared from her life since I got back."
"Didn't think you wanted me in her life, Slayer. You surely don't seem to have any use for me in yours anymore..."
"No, I don't. But Dawn's not me. She said...I didn't realize you'd spent so much time with her while I was gone." Buffy turned to meet his eyes, looked away quickly. "She misses you. I thought I was protecting her, but it turns out I made another person she counted on disappear."
"I miss her, too. Does this li'l epiphany of yours mean I can start comin' round to see her again?"
"Not at the house," Buffy shot back. "I don't want you having access to my home while we're...at odds with each other. Especially not now that we know you can hurt me." {{In more ways than just the one,}} she added mentally.
"That's fine. That's understandable." She looked mulish, like she wanted him to fight her on the point, but relaxed and let it pass. "Can we set it up for Dawn to have supper with me, say one night a week? Frankly, I worry about what the child is eating now I'm not around to nag her anymore. Have you *seen* the things she cooks?" That got him a wry grin for his trouble.
"I'll talk to her about it in the morning. And...I'm sorry I've been so bitchy. Dawn was right to call me out on that. I don't...I don't want to take our private differences out into our public lives, okay? Dawn..." Buffy took a deep, pained breath. "She said we sounded like our Mom and Dad, tonight, when she heard us fighting."
He reached a hand up to her cheek, and pulled it back sharply when she flinched away from his touch. At his heavy sigh she turned to look at him closely, noticing suddenly how fatigue had made the lines of his face go slack. "Are you okay?" she asked, voice neutral.
"Yeah. Fagged out. Down, from all this. Soul-sick, over what's happened." He took a drag on his cigarette.
"You don't have a soul, Spike..." she said, staring past him tiredly.
"Yeah. That's the hell of it."
"I need to get back...I don't want to leave Dawn alone with Willow too long. Not that she's in any shape right now to do anything reckless, but if something attacked the house..."
"...she'd be useless as a defense. Gotcha. I'd take on the job, but -" Buffy cut him off with another glare and started for the door.
"Slayer." She turned back in the doorway, silhouetted in moonlight. "You were wrong. What you said before, about me being in love with pain? It's not true. I'm in love with life. You...you make me feel connected to the world that's alive, up there in the sunlight, where I can't go. You gave me Dawn, an' Joyce, an' Tara an' maybe even Giles, some of the time. When you died, I had a hard time holdin' on to that feeling like I'm almost alive. That's why I held on to Dawn so hard, 'cause she came closest to making me feel like that again. An' feeling alive, yeah, part of that is pain...but it's not all of it either."
"But you're not. Alive." She sighed heavily. "Why are you telling me this now?"
He shrugged. "Dunno. Meter's still runnin' on our five minutes of civilized conversation before we go back to beatin' the crap outta each other; just thought I'd put it out there on the table..."
Buffy shook her head, and then was gone.
Spike finished his cigarette after she left, the silence of the crypt singing in his ears. The butt dangling from his lips, he carried the oak box in both hands over to a dark corner at the front of the crypt. He wiped cobwebs from a recessed alcove in the wall, meant to hold a statue or candle but long left empty, and carefully fitted the box into it.
He put a hand flat against the wall and leaned heavily against it. Weariness flooded through his bones, telling him the sun would be up soon. He thought darkly about the two days and nights just past, about the chip in his head and what it had to say about the Slayer, about Willow, and about the state of undeadness he'd never had cause to regret until two girls with the bluest eyes he'd ever seen came his way.
{{You don't have a soul, Spike.}} Her voice echoed in his head.
A hand came up to stroke the warm wooden lid of the box. "Yeah. Lotta that goin' around these days, Slayer." He spoke aloud, into the emptiness of his tomb.