Hunters on the Hellmouth
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AN: The whole idea for this series came to me while rewatching BTVS season 7 after finishing SPN. This chapter is the first episode rewrite (inspired by 7.01 Lessons). I’ve tried to stay close to canon while still telling my story and providing a different point of view. Hope it works.
Chapter 12: Secrets in the Basement
When Xander pulled into the Summers’s driveway, Dawn and Buffy, both looking a little uneasy, were already waiting on the porch. They went three quiet blocks before Xander asked, “So how’d you spend your last day of freedom, Dawnster?”
She shrugged from the backseat, trying and failing to cover her first day of high school jitters. “We hung out in the backyard. Pedicures and stuff. Buffy got me a cellphone, so I guess she doesn’t suck.”
“You’re welcome,” Buffy said dryly.
Buffy had carried through with her Dawn plans. Maybe Xander wouldn’t have to give the whole speech he’d been rehearsing on the drive over. “Pedicure and a phone. You sound ready for high school.”
“Still haven’t killed a vampire yet.”
“We’ll try again this weekend,” said Buffy in a soft voice like her mother’s.
“If I survive the week.”
“Not a dramatic concern,” said Xander, “but remember, I’m on campus if you need anything. We can trade numbers!”
“Emergencies only,” said Buffy, pointing at Xander as if he’d just offered her sister beer. “Dean and Sam are there, too, so you should be okay. I can do a once over when we get there.”
“You’re not walking me into school! That’s so lame,” Dawn whined.
Buffy threw up her hands in surrender and leaned against the door wearily.
As soon as Xander parked, Dawn shot out of the car and into the building.
Before she could follow her sister, Xander asked, “Hey, Buff, could we talk?”
“Okay,” she said. “Did you want to apologize, or did you want to go another round?”
Xander took a deep breath and let loose. “It’s not that I think Dean’s a bad guy or even has bad intentions. In fact, I like him a lot. Although, let’s be honest, a lamp would be a personality improvement over most of your boyfriends. The problem is you, Buffy.”
“What?” she demanded, arms crossed and eyes blazing.
“Well, it’s not you. That sounds bad. Taking it back. The problem is you’re boy crazy.” Xander’s stomach started flipping like it was embarrassed to be seen with him. Instinctively, he put his hands up to block a slap.
“That’s what you think of me? I only told you about me and Dean because you’re my friend, not because I wanted your opinion.”
“Okay, before you punch me, let me get my foot out of my mouth. The problem is you’re setting yourself up for pain. This has gone way beyond adults filling adult needs -- and dear God, why can’t I find a woman who wants that? -- into big thumpy cartoon heart territory. He’s still leaving, which makes him an idiot. I’ll do the friend thing. I’ll bring you ice cream. I’ll support your heart broken haircut. I’ll even watch chick flicks with you since Will’s still in therapy, but maybe pull up before you finish the nose dive.”
She shook her head in disgust. “Crash and burn. Now there’s something you have real experience with. Are we done? I need to check the school for hall pass-violating vampires.”
The waifish vampire with long black hair spun with her porcelain doll to music only the two of them could hear. Suddenly she stopped as if the music had been cut off and stared, repulsed, at the only other person in the basement.
Holding her doll to her ear, she whispered, “Spike, you’ve made Miss Edif very angry. We would give you a good shaking, but we don’ ‘ave a body yet. You are supposed to be our eyes and ears, but all you do is cry in the basement. Not a very good bird, are you?”
Spike clutched his head in his hands and rocked back and forth. “You are not Dru. You are not Dru!”
Unconcerned with his perception of reality, she and Miss Edith resumed dancing around him. “I ‘ave such big plans for us. If you sing for me all pretty like, you’ll get a reward. Maybe a turkish delight or the blood of babies running from your lips. Which sounds bed’er?”
“Neither. I don’t want anything!” he sniffled.
“That’s not true my love, she said, crouching in front of him, her large dark eyes burning through him. “You want ‘er. You offered to stake me for ‘er. Broke my ‘eart.”
“But she doesn’t want you,” said a small blonde, crouching in Drusilla’s place. “She wants to use you when it’s convenient; ignore you when it’s not. Doesn’t sound like love.”
Spike straightened his body and stared at her. With her golden hair cascading down her shoulders, green eyes confident and piercing, she was more beautiful than his usual imaginings. He wanted to stare, to touch her, to have her, but this Buffy wasn’t any more real than Drusilla had been. Pressing his back to the column behind him, he stared at the concrete wall behind her instead. Walls were real, and so far, they didn’t talk.
“This is a simple deal. I want the Slayer dead. You’re in love with this body. If you help me, I’ll let you have her. Let you bite her.” She gazed at him with sheer lust and power, her bottom lip pouty and enticing. She had never looked at him like that, not even when they were fucking each other senseless.
He stared at the wall.
“Silent treatment? Spike, I am the winning team. There’s no one here to stop me. Denying me just delays the inevitable. Ignore me and I’ll add you to the fire, but I would rather you agree to help.”
“Help! HELP!” screamed a young voice, a familiar voice.
Other than a few nervous janitors, no one had been in the school’s basement since it was built. It was a perfectly quiet place to go insane.
Curious, Spike rose, walking through the stinging visage of his ex. He had no intention of helping -- only crazy people would come to the basement, but he craved a less tormenting distraction.
Through a crack in the door, he saw two girls and a boy. Students. Scared. Screaming. One of them, a pale girl with straight brown hair, looked familiar in the dim light, like he’d met her in a past life. He’d lived and died for so long, it was hard to keep track of who he’d met and who he’d dreamed. They were huddled together mostly with their backs to him while three ghosts, rotten and angry, descended on them.
Then she was there. A whirlwind of acrobatics and blonde hair leaping over the ghosts to protect the children. She swung an iron rod at the ghosts over and over, dissipating them, only to appear elsewhere in the room.
“You have to pay for what you did.”
“For letting us die.”
“Sorry, blood sacrifice is not on the menu today. I think it’s goulash.” That was his girl, flippant in the face of danger, never letting them get under her skin.
As quickly as they’d appeared. The ghosts were gone, and the familiar girl fell into the arms of the blonde. Dawn. Buffy. Those were their names.
“What happened?!” demanded the boy.
“Xander found and burned the talisman controlling them,” said Buffy, brushing her sister’s hair away from her face and looking her over for injuries.
“What?” asked the other girl.
Dawn grabbed both of their hands and said, “I’ll explain over lunch.”
The students left, but Buffy remained steadfast and still in the dim supply room. Slowly, she turned and stared at the jarred door Spike was hiding behind. Startled, he stepped back and fell, sending the pipes ringing. In seconds, she was there, door thrown open, light glaring in his ill-adjusted eyes. She was real.
No. No. Can’t see me like this. Spike curled into a ball to shield himself from the light and her penetrating gaze.
“Spike?” His name fell from her lips with softness, concern.
It couldn’t be her. She couldn’t look at him with anything other than hatred after what he’d done. “No!” he shouted. “You’re not real! You’re not her!”
A hand on his shoulder. The faint smell of lilacs and sweat. The pound of her heart. She was real, and she’d come to him. He unwound his body, and she gasped, ghosting her fingers over the tattered flesh over his heart.
“I tried to cut it out,” he said.
Her breath hitched in her throat as tears welled up in her eyes. Without a word, she rushed from the room, like a dream disappearing upon waking.
The remainder of the day was a blur.
Spike.
The kids hadn’t gone far; she comforted them at the top of the stairs.
Spike.
Principal Wood, proverbially tall, dark and handsome -- and too nice to last in Sunnydale -- noticed her with the kids. He smiled, complimented her skills with teenagers.
Spike.
She tried to follow along, smile in the right places, laugh at his jokes, cover any of her new bruises, but just below her feet was the vampire who’d tried to rape her.
“I read your file,” Wood said, somehow still smiling.
“That probably took all summer.” She wished she’d been paying attention. She couldn’t let her always-justified-but-bad-on-paper behavior affect Dawn.
“You’re in a unique position to reach some of these kids, Miss Summers. So what do you say?”
Once they arrived home, Dawn called everyone they knew. During the hazy walk back, Buffy must have agreed to a celebration both for Dawn surviving her first day of a ghost-filled high school and for Buffy landing a surprise new job as peer counselor at Sunnydale High.
Out of all the people she had called, Anya was the first to arrive. “I’ve read that on occasions of good fortune, the lucky person is supposed to shower their friends with gifts and money. To make it simple, friend, you can just give me money.”
Buffy slumped on the couch staring at two squirrels fighting in the front yard.
Anya poked her. “Hello! I am here for my gifts and money!”
“Huh? What?”
“Someone has seen fit to employ you. Spread the wealth.”
“There’s no wealth to spread. Maybe pennies to fill holes with, but there will be no spreading.” Had she even remembered to ask what her pay was?
“Then why am I here?”
“Dawn’s cooking?”
Anya plopped into a chair and pouted.
Buffy hadn’t wanted a party. She wanted a hot bath to soak the new bruises she had on top of the burns from the Olanta. She wanted space to think.
Spike. Spike. Filthy and hiding in the school basement. Seeing him made her heart feel bruised.
After he’d tried to rape her, he’d disappeared. She’d always thought the part of him which missed humanity -- the part that encouraged her when everyone else pulled her down, the part she’d wanted to be with -- felt remorse and shame over the attack. She blamed the demon for it, but she couldn’t deny the demon was part of him, inside of him, tugging on his will. Saying it wasn’t there was as useful as denying her own shadow.
Ultimately, that’s what drove them apart. Spike was rough, insightful, poetic, and full of fight -- all traits she adored in a man, but he had no humanity. Without a soul, he had little hope of overpowering the demon pulling his strings. Every hurt, every slight, every insult could be blamed on the demon. He was simultaneously always guilty and always innocent.
Yet he’d seemed different in the school’s basement. His cocksure nature stripped away, leaving a trembling thing. All his pretty words turned to ravings. He’d been hurting himself, cutting at his heart. Were he not a vampire, he’d probably have killed himself by now. How long had he been there?
Xander arrived, doing his best to pretend they’d parted on good terms that morning, that she’d call him for help with the ghosts because she trusted him and not because she’d been desperate. “Buffster! Who would have thought that a day that started with a haunting would have ended with you joining the ranks of the employed? That’s a much better thank you than the usual cuts and scrapes. Congratulations!”
Scowling, Anya stated, “There are no presents, Xander.”
His fake smile crumbled. “No, An, a job is not usually celebrated with presents.”
“Yet, I stayed, despite my disappointment over Buffy’s stinginess. I except you’ll be leaving now.”
“Why, so I can start a rival woe-is-me party over someone not giving me something they couldn’t possibly deliver?”
“You would know all about not delivering. The last time we had sex --”
Too tired to referee a fight, Buffy headed to the kitchen.
“No, no, no!” Dawn squealed. “You can’t watch me make your special Yay Buffy! dinner! It’s bad luck!”
“Okay, fine!” Buffy lightly tugged Dawn’s ponytail and kissed her on the forehead.
Upset as she was about Spike, she was equally overjoyed that Dawn had survived her first day at Sunnydale High. Grabbing a glass, corkscrew, and bottle of riesling, Buffy headed to the backyard. Lying back in one of the lawn chairs they’d set up for “sister spa day,” she thought about which of the utility bills she’d pay down with her first paycheck.
Paycheck. The word tumbled through her separate from reality. Other than having once been a teenager, she had zero qualifications for her new job. We’ll pay you to give unqualified advice. Principal Wood hadn’t been so blunt, but she couldn’t help but look the gift horse in the mouth. Who on earth looked at her student file -- complete with burning down the school gym in LA and leading a riot that blew up Sunnydale High -- and thought, responsible?
After her second glass of wine, a familiar engine rumbled down her street and cut off in front of her house. A few minutes later, the Winchesters joined her in the backyard.
“Holy shit! Can those two fight!” said Dean, shaking his head.
“They were engaged.”
“Yeah, Xander told us,” said Sam.
“Did he tell you he left Anya at the altar?” Buffy asked while pouring herself another glass.
The brothers both winced and sucked air sharply through their teeth.
Sam sat in the chair beside Buffy. “Okay then. Moving on to things that aren’t awkward and painful, Dawn said you got a job!”
“Peer counseling. That’s you-don’t-have-a-degree counseling. Starts tomorrow.”
Always polite, Sam continued to ask questions about her new job while Dean stood examining her. She smiled at Sam, engaged in the conversation, but she knew Dean could smell the drowning of sorrows a mile off.
Buffy caught small glimpses of him inspecting her, but she couldn’t return the gaze. She’d asked Dean to stay for his own safety. Asked him to stay for her. She’d opened up to him about one of the most difficult times in her life, and for a moment, she thought he opened up in kind. The way he held her, kissed her, calmed her did not feel like a fling.
She hated to admit it, but Xander was right even if he was a jerk about it. The more she wanted Dean to stay, the more she was sure he was hitting the road in a week and a half, leaving her with Spike and heartache.
A cry rose from the kitchen. Everyone bolted for the backdoor. Dean got there first and dashed back out with a flaming dish he threw in the yard. Anya and Xander opened the windows to fan out the smoke. Dawn, fat tears in her eyes, stood in the doorway and watched Sam put dinner out with the hose.
“Mac and cheese then,” she mumbled with a crack in her voice.
Buffy gave her a long hug. “Dawnie, it’s sweet that you want to do something for me, but you really don’t have to. I just want you to not be on fire. Not-on-fire-Dawn is my very favorite Dawn.”
Dawn let a little chuckle escape into her sister’s shoulder.
“Hey Dawn, sweetie,” said Sam, “how about you and I go get dinner, whatever you want. You can tell me all about your first day of high school.”
“There were ghosts.”
Sam pursed his lips. “Of course there were.” He caught the keys Dean tossed and he ushered Dawn back to the house.
Anya glared at Xander. “This is all your fault! You’ve ruined Buffy’s party.”
“How the hell is this my fault?”
“It just makes me feel better to blame you!”
“That’s just great, because I happen to be the only person here who doesn’t want something from Buffy. Between you and--”
“Enough!” Buffy yelled. “Go home.”
“But Buff, I --”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry. I don’t care if you’re done fighting. I don’t need sparring in my space tonight. Please, go home.”
“Fine. I didn’t want to be around you people anyway.” Anya spun on her heel and stalked out in a huff.
Xander glared at Dean and Buffy. “I’ve only tried to be supportive, to help…”
“I know, Xander. It’s just -- It’s been a weird day. Go home, relax. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jaw clenched, Xander slowly walked to the door. He turned back and said, “I’ve got somewhere to be tomorrow. How about your boyfriend drives you?” then slammed the door behind him.
They stood in silence for a moment, just letting the suddenly uncrowded house breathe. Dean took Buffy’s small hand in his and lead her out of the smoky kitchen. They sat on the porch stairs. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
“What is going on?”
Buffy ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath.“Have you ever cared for someone who was toxic for you? Maybe they weren’t a bad person, but the two of you together made poison? And when you were together you hated yourself so much for the way they made your heart sing, that you spit out the cruelest words you could find hoping it would break their hold on you?”
She wrung her hands. “That’s where Xander and Anya are. They’re still in love, and they hate themselves for it.”
“Can’t say I ever felt that way, but I was really asking about you. When I left here Sunday, you were happy. Just killed a demon. You were planning a day hanging out with your sister. I ain’t seen you for a day, and now you’re wound pretty tight. What’s eating at you, Girly.”
“You know that the problem really is with Xander and Anya?” she continued. “They won’t commit. They broke each other’s hearts months ago, but instead of choosing to move past it together or take their hearts away from each other, they keep going through the same motions over and over. ‘Here’s my heart. Please, don’t smash it with a hammer. Why are you smashing it with a hammer?’ They’re tied together in this weird non-relationship, and neither one can move on.”
“Buffy, I --”
“Did you want something, Dean?” Do you want me?
“I’m...not...sure.” He stood up and rubbed his neck. “I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep before Sam an’ I go on patrol tonight. Want me to take you to work tomorrow?”
“I’ll walk,” she said softly.
“Okay, then I’ll swing by after. Buffy, I, uh, I hope Xander and Anya can figure something out.”
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