NINE



Disconsolately slumped in bra and panties at the edge of her bed, Buffy caught sight of her wan, bedraggled reflection in the closet door mirror and pretended she was having a conversation with the Buffy-replica sex toy that represented an all-time low in Spike bad ideas.



BUFFYBOT: (chirpy) Hello, I'm idiotic and cheerful and I look just like the Slayer. In fact I think I am the Slayer, and none of the Slayer's friends can tell the difference until I open my moronic but full and kissable mouth! I am a portrait mannequin of Buffy, a girl, fully functional except that my brain is made of Cheez Wiz. I was constructed by Warren, who hated girls, killed Tara, was skinned by Willow, and is currently featured as a manifestation of the First Evil in Andrew's empty head but soon to appear at a theater near you. I can do sex for days if my gearing doesn't lock up! I am extremely well lubricated!

BUFFY: (sour) Hello yourself, you pneumatic bimbo. Gettin' any?

BUFFYBOT: (chirpy) No, I'm packed in pieces in a box in the closet under the stairs and communing with the dustbunnies because RealBuffy never cleans. O why doesn't Spike love me anymore? How about you?

BUFFY: (sour) Funny that you should ask. In addition to being a rotten housekeeper, RealBuffy is an enormous slut. While extremely well lubricated she snuck downstairs hoping for a rest-of-the-night sexathon and found her intended safely chaperoned between her best friend, a lesbian witch in a perky pink bathrobe and bunny slippers, and her freakin' little sister who used to be a Key of Mystical Energy and now is a reasonable facsimile of a bolted door!

The stake Dawn held had probably been symbolic.

All the tableau had lacked was an apparition of Joyce Summers. Then the chaste rest of Buffy's once-lover would have been guarded by all three Persons of the Triune Goddess, in all Her dread majesty, per innumerable earnest Tara lectures: the Maiden, the Maid, and the Crone.

Guess the Crone had other plans.

Sorry, Tara. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Spike. Sorry, ME.

Then it occurred to her that without hesitation or any vestige of thought, she'd joined the tableau herself and completed it.

The Crone stands alone
The Crone stands alone.
Heigh-ho the merry-O.
The Crone stands alone.

"Gaaaah!" Buffy scrubbed hard at her burning eyes. "What is it with me and cheese? I hate my life!"

She next tried to pretend that Spike's image, sort of vague because no mirror would really reflect it, wearing only jeans, was sitting on the bed next to the Buffybot.

BUFFY: (angrily) Spike, why do you have to be such a freaking Romantic? Just have sex with me four or five times a day. It's not as if it's anything personal.

SPIKE: (looking neutrally attentive)

BUFFY: (plaintively) It's not as if I don't appreciate your gorgeous cheekbones, magnificently athletic physique when not recuperating from a month of torture, pretty blue eyes, great ass, and growing collage of attractive permanent scarring. Or your non-existent refractory time and century plus of experimentation with mind-bending and physically impossible positions it should take at least four of us to get into. Or your amusing willingness to hurled into walls and regard a brick as a marital aid.

SPIKE: (looking vaguely pained and sexy as hell)

BUFFY: (cajoling) I admit that you're a person. I admit that you actually love me. And I know--HOW I know!--you have a freaking soul. I don't mind anymore that you're technically dead. Only a minority of my boyfriends have had pulses or measurable brain activity. What else do you want from me? It's not as if I'm discriminating, Spike: I don't warm up to ANYBODY. Ms. Permanent Winter of Sunnydale California, here, behind Door Number Two. Why can't it just be fun and feel good? Except for the blood, broken bones and name-calling? Why does it always have to mean something?

SPIKE: (looking straight past her and sexy as hell)

BUFFY: (pouting attractively) If you loved me you wouldn't want me to be so miserable. You'd do whatever I want, as often as I want, hanging from the freaking ceiling if I want. It's not as if your feelings matter, after all, supposing you have any. I'm the Slayer: I deserve to be pampered and put to bed with Cherry Garcia ice cream with lots of fudge and Spike on top. You're tough: you can take it! Why won't you take it, Spike?

SPIKE: (smiling enigmatically, raising the eyebrow and looking sexy as hell)

BUFFY: Oh shit.

Sudden loud knocking at the bedroom door: Kennedy, asking if Buffy was up because Giles was on the phone from someplace unpronounceable. Buffy hurled a pillow at the mirror then grabbed for a robe.



The stairs were crowded. The hall was worse. Giles was on the regular phone, which was in the living room and tethered to a cord. Sitting on the weapons chest, Buffy clenched her left fist against her ear, trying to make out his voice against the transatlantic crackle and the girls' noise. Giles started giving arrival time and flight numbers and she had nothing to write it down on.

"No," Buffy hollered, "take a later flight, Giles. Later! After dark. Wait, I need to get something--"

She dropped the receiver and dashed into the hallway, full of SITs coming and going. Morning light was bright in the kitchen, to the left. At the end of the hall, Xander, looking surly, was working on fitting a whole new basement door, the old one leaned against the wall in the corner. Dawn was jiggling around while Willow showed Spike something in a book, a stack of other books at her feet. Spike was holding the green notebook dangling at his side. Target acquisition was complete and locked. Buffy made a quick lunge and grabbed the notebook, except that Spike grabbed back, yelling indignantly, "Hey!"

Buffy began wrestling him for it, blurting, "Giles is on the phone, I need--" Without thinking about it she shoved him airborne into the wall.

Rebounding, Spike shouted, "And you keep out of it too!" to nobody in particular and reached long to catch Buffy's retreating elbow, whirling her around. Buffy came down strong on her right leg and pulled a head-high roundhouse kick, nearly decking Willow, with her left. Spike leaned back under it and was straightening when Xander caught him in the back of the head with a hammer and Kennedy came up with the stake still lying in the corner. Dawn got between, she and Kennedy smacking wildly back and forth, which brought Willow into it, and Spike, suddenly in game face, was going after Xander. Everybody shrieking bloody murder. Then the SITs got into the melee, everybody in everybody's way, getting hit and shoved from every direction, crowded into the small hallspace, and Buffy now throwing people indiscriminately aside to get at Kennedy and the stake, heart clenched and cold. And Spike fighting like a cornered cougar in the middle of it, no howls of punishment from the chip, full-out and unrestrained and overwhelmingly outnumbered. Buffy belted Kennedy and got the stake away from her, then butted straight through Dawn to reach Spike, took him from the side, and threw him down the cellar stairs.

Xander slammed the door and Buffy held it the second it took Xander to drop the top hinge pin and bang it into place. The door thumped once. Buffy held it. Xander got his power drill and started attaching the bolt. Fastening the screws took about a minute. Xander shoved the bolt home.

The screeching had only gotten louder and more confused. Dawn was in a heap, rocking, holding her middle. Willow and Kennedy were having a heated conversation. Xander had started attaching a second bolt vertically to the top corner farthest from the hinges.

Buffy walked slowly back up the hall and the SITs got out of her way. She found the handset dangling on its cord and mechanically took it up. Without waiting to find out if Giles was still on the line, she said, "You'll have to call back. We've had a kind of a thing," and hung up. The whole business couldn't have taken over three minutes.

Rona was helping Amanda clench some cloth around her bleeding wrist. As Buffy passed, Amanda blurted tearfully, "He bit me. Does that mean--?"

"No. I'll talk to everybody about vampires after lunch." Feeling frozen solid, Buffy swing a glance around at the variously frightened, demoralized, and furious SITs. "Anybody else hurt?" She waited a few seconds but no voice claimed injury through the sobbing. And she saw no bodies on the floor. They'd been lucky. "Get your breakfasts then. We'll talk about this after lunch."

As the SITs started to disperse, Buffy went to see that Dawn was all right. On the floor, Dawn jerked away and smacked at Buffy's hand when Buffy patiently reached again. Nothing serious, maybe a black eye, certainly some bruises.

Dawn spat at her, "You started it!"

"I know."




At three o'clock, wearing black slacks and black sleeveless top, golden hair gathered and pinned, Buffy nodded to Xander. He slipped the four bolts now securing the corners of the basement door. There'd been no sound or sign from downstairs that Buffy knew of at all. The door opened onto darkness and silence and descending stairs. Starting down, she switched on the light.

Halfway down, she saw exactly what she'd expected to see: Spike seated crosslegged on the cot in Yogic stillness, manacled wrists on his knees, bare-chested and barefoot. Top-lit by the bare bulb overhead, the circle of scars on his chest and abdomen was enigmatic and powerful: like warrior markings. There was cigarette smell in the air, but Buffy dismissed that awareness. She stopped at the foot of the stairs.

Spike in chains: slightly battered and sexy as hell.

He said, "Slayer." There was no reading his face.

Buffy raised a hand, and Dawn descended, straight and slim as a high priestess, bearing a blue cup. She crossed the basement floor and sank in a flow of skirts by the side of the cot, offering the cup.

It was a good minute before Spike's unchanging attention left Buffy and acknowledged Dawn there. He said quietly, "Not just now, Bit."

Dawn set the cup down and stayed where she was.

In answer to a second gesture, the SITs were coming down the stairs by twos, silent, like a dance. Willow and Xander came last. The SITs arranged themselves into a semicircle. Willow and Xander took places to either side of Buffy.

Buffy commented, "There wasn't time to get Anya."

Spike said nothing, watching. His left hand rested on Dawn's bowed head, fingering through her hair in minute movements.

Buffy took a long breath and said, "This is Spike and he's a vampire. He also has a soul. He is a good man and I depend on him. He's mine. Nobody else in this house will ever raise a hand against him except in training or by my direction. Or his. Say it: I will never raise a hand against Spike."

Buffy waited out the ragged mutter of repetition. She noticed Dawn repeating it, too.

When it was quiet again, Buffy continued, "What happened this morning was my fault. It was completely wrong every way there is to be wrong. And it was stupid. And we were real lucky it wasn't worse. From today, nobody is to touch any weapon except if I, or Spike, tells you to. Say it."

They said it, Xander's deeper voice audible among all the higher ones.

Buffy said, "We six--me, Xander, Willow, and Anya when I can find her, and Giles when he returns--and Spike, are the bosses here. Any of us can give orders that will not be disobeyed except for good reason. They will be respected and obeyed without argument or reservation. If there's a disagreement among us six, we'll discuss it privately. I know of no such disagreement now. I'm the Slayer--the Chosen One. The responsibility is mine. The choices are mine. Depending on the circumstances, I may designate any of the other five as my second and their authority then is mine. We will keep you all from death with all our strength, in every way we can. And whoever should break this covenant is no longer under the Slayer's protection and is lost to our company. I swear I will abide by this. So help me God."

They said it. All of them: even Xander. Then Buffy walked forward and put the key to each of the manacles, removing each cuff and laying it aside. She took up Spike's left hand from Dawn's head, turned it, and set the key in his palm. Against momentary resistance, she closed his fingers over it and let his hand go.

Buffy said over her shoulder, "That's all. Go back to what you were doing. Don't ever come down here uninvited. Except Kennedy, who stays." As the girl turned, startled, among the others, Buffy said, "Kennedy, Spike is gonna show you how to stake a vampire in an enclosed space. It's plain you need practice. And expert instruction."

That was a risk: Spike's eyes went wary and surprised. But he at last lowered his gaze and nodded.

Her eyes never leaving Spike, Buffy dropped down on her heels next to Dawn and waited until he looked at her. While most of the SITs were still on the stairs or milling around at the bottom, Buffy held out her arms and waited, and Spike gently leaned into them. His strong arms came around her back. Their heads were tipped together. He was breathing: short shallow breaths Buffy only knew about because she was holding him.

She asked him softly, "Can you be OK with this."

"Didn't leave me a whole lot of choice about it, did you, pet?"

"Give me another six hours and I'll make up a better speech. I did the best I could. It was my fault. I'm sorry." She hugged him tighter, glad for once not to have to meet his eyes.

"Yours, am I?" he murmured against her ear.

"Yes. You are. What the hell that actually means, what we do with it, I don't know. But you got Willow on your side some way, and she'll take care of Xander and his world-famous Silver Hammer. I'll take care of Giles. Eruption at five, news at eleven. I'll take care of it. And I sorta think you can handle Anyanka.... And if you do, I'll kill you, I swear to God." Breathy purr of a chuckle against her cheek. "I need you here and you're with us. They've accepted that. You have to have a place here that everybody recognizes. This morning mustn't ever happen again. God, Spike! I can't manage like this anymore. Can't--"

His torso moved and he was rocking her, holding her solidly. For the first time in months, maybe years, she felt consoled, safe, cherished, protected. "Hush, pet. Hush now. We'll sort it out, clean or messy. It's what I wanted. I can be good for you now. I will."

"I know. Giles is coming in tomorrow sometime, at night I hope, with three more Potentials. When you've taught Kennedy not to come at you with pointy objects, hopefully without damaging her too severely, come find me and we'll figure out how to play it. Willow plans because we both suck at it. Then we execute, at which we're very, very good." She gave him another squeeze, then pushed away. But she stayed another minute, balanced on the balls of her feet, looking him in the eyes. "Nobody ever gets to hurt you except me. Mine, Spike."

"Yours, Slayer. Until I'm dust."