Chapter Text
Sunnydale
January 2002
Grace (noun) – A temporary immunity or exemption; a reprieve.
From Freedictionary.com
“You’re here.”
The Slayer looked up from the cup of coffee in her hands at the flat words. Dawn was staring at her from the doorway of the kitchen, outside of the slanting morning sunshine coming through the blinds. Buffy forced a smile. “Yeah. Here I am.”
“You didn’t go, then.”
“No, I went.”
“What about that girl?”
“I didn’t – It wasn’t me.”
Dawn stood there another couple of seconds before spinning on her heel. She was gone, the stomp of feet on the stairs punctuating the end of the short conversation.
Buffy cringed a little. After coming back from the police station, she managed a couple hours of sleep when her brain finally stopped going over what she’d learned. She hadn’t killed Katrina Silber, and she strongly suspected that Warren Mears had. To frame her, to get her to think she did it, Warren did some wonky thing to make everything bounce around and rewind, with demons, confusing shifts in time, and a dead body at the end.
Messing with time was definitely a big clue as to who was at fault. She still had occasional nightmares about the retail time loop, and to score a slot in her rotation of terrible dreams after seven years of slaying… Well, that took some seriously warped shit. Yay, Warren. She guessed.
Buffy flinched when Dawn slammed the bathroom door upstairs. She gingerly took a sip of her coffee, which was finally cool enough to drink. God, she was tired. She drifted for long moments, just staring at her hands wrapped around the cup, at her knuckles, her red and swollen knuckles.
“Hey. Buffy.”
She turned to Xander with a jerk and forced the corners of her mouth to curve. “Oh! Sorry. Got lost there for a moment.” Tilting the half-full mug, she said wryly, “Not enough caffeine yet.”
“Nectar of the gods,” he agreed, “or at least of the working man, second only to beer.” Xander’s eyes darted to the kitchen clock. “Dawn about ready for school?”
“I-I think so. Listen, Xan, something happened last night. We need a Scooby meeting. Do you think you could come by the Magic Box at lunch?”
“Sure. I planned to see An then, anyway.”
Dawn entered the kitchen and flounced past them without saying a word, her bookbag thumping against her hips as she strode out the door. Xander gave Buffy a quizzical look, but she just shrugged.
When Willow woke an hour later, the Slayer filled her in on Katrina Silber’s death and her own suspicions. She told the story again to Anya when they got to the Magic Box. Anya asked several astute questions about the demon Buffy saw, but without Giles’ book collection, they didn’t have any luck identifying it. Anya knew of some demons who shed time distortion like Persian cats shed fur, though.
Xander came in with lunch for everyone, for which a broke Buffy was very grateful. He also brought a newspaper featuring a front-page article about a suspected suicide. “Initial forensic evidence suggests a fall and that Katrina was dead for more than a day before you saw her,” he added, folding the paper.
“It was murder, not suicide,” Buffy said firmly. “And it was Warren. I mean, why go to all that trouble to cover up a suicide?”
After lunch, Xander kissed Anya goodbye and returned to work. Willow had to go to class. At loose ends, Buffy wandered into the training room and made a few desultory swipes at the heavy bag and another few at the speed bag before calling it a day. Anya didn’t really like the sound of the thuds during business hours; the short session had nothing to do with her knuckles still being sore or anything. She stood a little straighter, firming her mouth, then headed home for a bit more sleep before she had to make dinner for Dawn.
“Lasagna okay?” Buffy called when she heard the front door open and the heavy thud of Dawn’s bookbag landing beside the stairs. “It’s homemade-ish, meaning I’m putting a frozen entrée in the oven.” She set the timer and went to meet Dawn at the door.
“Why bother?”
“Uh, because it’s dinnertime?”
“No, I mean this act.” Dawn gestured impatiently. “Like you care. I know you don’t.”
“I do care.” Buffy did not mention that she’d died to save her sister. How much more proof did she need?
“So… the way you care for someone is to leave them?”
“What?” For a just a second, her mind flashed to the last month of high school and Angel’s sincere expression as he explained his unilateral decision to leave.
“You wanted to get away from me so bad, you volunteered for prison!”
“No! That wasn’t the reason at all.” Buffy looked away for a second, trying to get a rein on her temper. “I wasn’t trying to ditch you! I’m the Slayer. I can’t be allowed to –”
“Be happy? Ever?” Dawn scoffed.
Realizing her sister shifted the argument just made Buffy angrier. “That has nothing to do with it.” She tried to keep an even tone.
“Oh, I think it has everything to do with you being the Slayer. You don’t want to do it anymore, so you’ll just,” Dawn pulled a face full of mock-consideration, “oh, be like Faith and go off to jail.”
“Dammit, Dawn! I’m nothing like Faith! Why do you think I went to turn myself in?”
“So you could opt out!” Dawn moved closer, unconsciously using her height to try to intimidate her sister. “That’s why you jumped! You didn’t do it for me, you did it for yourself. You were trying to opt out then, and you’re still trying to opt out!”
Buffy gave a very controlled shove to move her sister out of her personal space, palm flat against Dawn’s shoulder. The teenager still staggered back over two feet and into the wall.
Dawn regained her balance, her eyes wide. She kept her distance, her face wary for a moment, both of them thinking of how Buffy slapped her in the aftermath of Joyce’s death. Then she squared her jaw. “I think you’re just selfish,” Dawn said, low and hard, “and that’s why you can’t handle not being the only child. You hate having a sister.”
“That’s not true! I –”
“You should have let me jump!”
With that, she grabbed her bag, turned, and dashed up the stairs. Dawn moved quick, but not so fast that the Slayer didn’t see the tears on her sister’s pale face.
Buffy wound plastic wrap around the untouched tray of lasagna, unwilling to let six dollars of food go to waste. Was she supposed to reheat it in the oven tomorrow or could it be microwaved now? Mom would have known, she thought sadly.
She tracked Dawn’s movements without real awareness, listening to the footsteps moving from her room to the bathroom and back, then the sound of mattress springs. Buffy suspected Dawn had put on headphones and her Train CD. Joyce bought it for her last year on their final outing to the Sunnydale mall, and Dawn still listened to it regularly.
Flexing her fingers, she realized they weren’t sore any longer. Yay Slayer healing. Buffy abruptly grabbed the roll of plastic wrap and whipped around to the drawer where it belonged, wanting to stay busy. She surveyed the kitchen, but it was still clean because neither sister actually ate.
With nothing to distract her from her dangerous thoughts, she was grateful when she heard a knock at the door. “Hey, Tara,” she said, stepping to the side so the other woman could come in. “Willow isn’t here,” she added.
“I-I actually was hoping to talk to you,” Tara admitted, looking down. “Is it a good time?”
“Yes, in the sense that I’m not doing anything; no, in the sense that I just got into a screaming match with Dawn.”
“Oh?” She looked up to study Buffy’s face, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear to keep it out of the way.
“Yeah, she’s upstairs immersed in inoffensive alt-rock.”
“Headphones and Train?” Tara showed a lopsided smile when Buffy gave her the expected nod. “Poor Dawnie.” Her smile grew determined. “I guess you could use some good news, huh?”
“I really could,” Buffy agreed, gesturing toward the sofa in the living room. “Do you want – I mean, have you eaten? We have lasagna.”
“No, I’m good. I just wanted to tell you face to face about the spell,” and she nearly bowed as she sat, causing her hair to swing forward again and hide her face. “The, you know, resurrection spell. I went over it…”
Buffy listened in disbelief to Tara’s conclusions. She hadn’t come back wrong? A ‘cellular sunburn?’ No, that couldn’t be right. It just couldn’t. Her limber, healthy fingers curled into fists, no hint of swelling at the knuckles any longer. Something had to be wrong with her, because she wasn’t supposed to feel empty and cold like this. She wasn’t supposed to shove her no-supernatural-strength sister. She wasn’t supposed to… wasn’t supposed to just keep hit–
The Slayer realized she was crying, spilling words of protest she could barely comprehend to a clearly worried Tara. The witch held out her arms, offering comfort, as Buffy sobbed that she couldn’t stand the way the Scoobies would look at her if they knew. She begged Tara to not forgive her.
Nonplussed, Tara rocked her for a moment, only understanding a fraction of what the other woman meant. “Oh, honey,” she whispered.
Buffy heard her soothing words, but distantly, the same way she felt the arms around her. She finally experienced something besides numbness, something sharp, but this broken, hopeless feeling wasn’t better. Not at all.
After a few minutes of holding her and whispering encouraging words, Tara led her upstairs to her bedroom. She turned down Buffy’s bed and rummaged for a loose tank top in the bureau. While Buffy stripped down to her panties and donned the top, Tara went for a glass of water. “You look exhausted, sweetie. Have a drink; I’ll leave it here on the nightstand. Get some rest. You d-don’t have to deal with anything right now, okay? Just sleep. I’ll look in on Dawn and make sure the house is locked up.”
Buffy dropped onto the bed and let Tara arrange the covers. “Thank you,” she managed. She couldn’t begin to explain what was going on in her mind or her heart, so she just said again, “Thank you.”
“Oh, honey. You shouldn’t thank me. I hate that I hurt you, that w-we hurt you. But you’re strong, Buffy. Not just Slayer strong, but inside. You didn’t choose this world, but you can choose how you deal with it. And I’ll be here for you, no matter what, okay?”
“Okay.” Her voice was small, her belief in the truth of those words even smaller. Tara had not been there for her. She was too busy avoiding Willow.
“Good night. Call me if you need me. A-anytime.” Tara paused at the door to give her a troubled look, then gently closed it behind her.
Buffy stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.
The resurrection spell worked. Nothing’s wrong with me.
Oh, but there is. There is.
Sleep claimed her, exhaustion dragging her down into the uneasy darkness, her worries going with her. When she woke gradually in the still-dark room, she wasn’t sure where her troubled dreams ended and her muddled thoughts began.
Spike could hit her without consequence. Nothing was wrong with her. Dawn was so angry, so hurt. Tara said there wasn’t anything at fault in the spell. She shoved Dawn and almost knocked her down. She wasn’t a murderer. She didn’t come back wrong. She shoved Dawn onto the ground. No, not the ground. Just into the wall. Dawn stumbled, but didn’t fall. She shoved Spike onto the ground.
Buffy shifted in her bed, throwing off the covers. She was suddenly too hot. She raised her hands into the air, as if warding away her thoughts, freely flexing her hands. They’d been damaged yesterday, injured because…
Closing her eyes tightly in denial, she rolled to her side, curling into a fetal position. Dawn had tears on her face when she ran up the stairs. Spike didn’t have tears when he was on the ground, maybe couldn’t. His eyes were blue like Dawn’s and far too human. Or, one of his eyes.
She rolled the other way, curling into an even tighter ball of tense Slayer. Dawn just doesn’t get it, that’s all, can’t understand. Buffy was not going to be like Faith, ever. Killing humans was wrong; it’s a line that can’t be crossed. If she’d just accepted that she killed a person, even if it was some kind of accident, she’d be no better than Faith.
Faith. The way Spike didn’t fight back… Why did that remind her of –
“You’re nothing!” Her own face spitting vitriol at her when Faith stole her body. “You’re disgusting! A useless, murderous bitch!”
Faith had gasped out her deepest truth as she hit her own face, her discarded face. Buffy had stopped fighting against Faith in that church, realizing just who the other Slayer was really struggling against.
And only the night before, she’d been the one pounding on a familiar face while spewing her hatred.
“You’re dead inside! You can’t feel anything real!”
Truth in a different mirror.
She had backed away from Spike, turned away so she didn’t have to see. But she saw him anyway, saw him try to get up as he begged her not to turn herself in to the police.
Spike couldn’t get up.
Gritting her teeth, Buffy moved so that she was flat, her limbs starfished out so that she covered all of her small bed. What time was it, anyway? Was it early enough that she could get up and leave the torture of her thoughts? Surely it was close to six. The sun would be coming up soon.
The sunrise was coming soon.
Spike couldn’t get up and follow her yesterday. He hadn’t checked on her in his annoying way, either.
Buffy sat upright suddenly, her eyes round and horrified, staring into the dim room. She bolted out of bed, grabbed yesterday’s clothes from the hamper where Tara had thoughtfully put them, and rushed down the stairs and out of the house. She ran, occasionally stumbling over her untied shoelaces.
Buffy got to the police station in the first brightness of the morning, just after the sun rose over the Transverse Mountains. No one was in the sunlight-flooded alley.
Oh, no.
Spike couldn’t get to his feet.
She swallowed. Well, of course no one was here. That was yesterday. Two whole sunrises ago.
He just went home, that’s all.
Then why was her breath coming in tiny gasps? She knew that was too shallow. She was panicking, and that wasn’t good. Lack of oxygen would slow her down.
Because she was already running through the nearly empty streets toward his crypt. She threw the door open and was halfway inside before she could come to a stop.
Empty.
Buffy tried to call his name, but her throat was too tight for sound.
She flung open the trapdoor and dropped down to the lower level.
No Spike. She didn’t feel any telltale vamp tinglies along her spine.
His bed was empty.
No.
Oh, no. No.
No! I can't do this without him!
Buffy’s knees gave way, and she crumpled into a heap at the foot of the ladder, her rounded eyes fixed on the bed where Spike was… not.
He was… He hadn’t…
I left him to die.
The long hours of denial broke, and so did Buffy Summers.