Buffy stood in the kitchen after Spike had slipped out of the back door into the yard, still talking to herself. "That was brilliant. 'Come back later and we'll talk.' Yeah, right. Like I want to talk. That would involve actually opening my mouth and speaking and perhaps not lying but maybe lying and either way it's going to suck and I am *so* *screwed*!"

Disgusted with herself, she pitched the plastic spatula across the room. It smacked into the wall and fell to the floor with no real impact. She sighed.

"Great. Now I have more dirty dishes to do."

It was dark outside and she was slaying. Make that Slaying. Capital-S Slaying. Out to fight the forces of evil-Slaying. They were converging again, like some stupid little vamp convention was in town. She had gone through six newborns just in the Shady Rest alone. She had finished her nightly patrol and was wandering on the UC Sunnydale quad, wondering if she should go back to school in the spring semester, when she ran into Tara.

"Hi, Buffy. Out on patrol?" Tara was walking back towards the Stevenson dorm where Buffy had lived when she was living on campus.

"Yeah. Same stuff, different day. How're you? Need a escort walking home?"

"Oh, that's okay, you don't have to bother. Any nasties who attacked me would have to take my place for my physics exam on Friday and I'm sure they don't want that." She smiled uncertainly.

Buffy grinned. "I was thinking about going back to school next semester. I don't know what I would do for money but, hey," she shrugged, "I can always dream. So how are things with you?" She hoped it wasn't too obvious that she was trying to check that Tara was doing well post-Willow.

"I-I'm all right, I guess. Studying a lot. My grades are improving since I'm not spending so much time in the Magic Box. Not that, um, not that it was bad to spend so much time there. I usually had a lot of fun researching. But enough about me. How's Dawnie?"

Thoughtful, Buffy replied. "Oh, she's doing okay. She's -- well, to be honest, she's kind of taking you and Willow breaking up pretty hard. I guess she was really close to you while I was dead." Tara nodded, and she continued. "I'm still not sure why you left, to be honest. You know you're still welcome at our house, right?" Buffy watched her closely.

"Oh, no, thanks, but, that wasn't it. It wasn't you guys. Nothing to do with you guys. It was-- well, it's a long story, I guess, or maybe not that long." Tara started walking again, heading towards a bench near a grove of bushes. "You remember when Dawn was missing on Halloween. Willow and I were out looking and we went to the Bronze. We couldn't see anything, though, I mean, the place was packed full of people, it was impossible to see if Dawn was anywhere. And Willow just started chanting something and I interrupted her and asked what she was doing. She said she was doing a spell to reveal any fourteen year-old girls in the crowd -- but how the spell worked was to send everyone who *wasn't* a fourteen year-old girl to an alternate dimension for a split second. I panicked. I mean, who sends people to alternate dimensions on a whim? That's not something you can just play around with." Buffy nodded, looking a smidge upset herself. "So I kind of argued with her, and told her she was relying too much on magic to solve all of her problems. Like with Anya's decorations. We could have just gone to the store, but she magicked them out of thin air. This stuff is all about balance and keeping everything in sync, and I think she's really at risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention. Anyways, after that, I left her there and going out to look on my own. You know the rest."

Buffy nodded assent again and she continued. "That night, we were getting ready for bed and Willow brought up the fight. I snapped at her, and said I didn't want to discuss it. And then she--," Tara swallowed the lump of pain in her throat and continued. "She put a spell on me to make me forget the fight."

Buffy looked stunned. "A spell on you? She erased your memory? That's so-- Oh my god. That's what happened at the Magic Box, when we all forgot who we were, that was Willow?"

Tara nodded. "She didn't admit it to me, but she looked so guilty and didn't object when I said I was leaving. See, I had, I kind of gave her an ultimatum. I said no magic for a week or I was going to leave her. And I guess as soon as Dawn and I left the house, she decided to do the forget spell one better. I don't think she intended what happened, but it doesn't matter. She's out of control."

"Oh my god." Buffy sat down on the bench with a thud. "I can't believe she magicked us all like that." She stared at the sidewalk at her feet.

"Yeah." Tara sat down next to her. "It's painful. It's hard and it's hurtful, and it's painful, a-and I don't know if I can forgive her for doing that to me and to all of her friends."

Buffy sat, shoulders slumped, looking like she'd just lost her best friend -- which, perhaps, she had. "I don't know what to say. Tara, I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. I always encouraged her to do her spells and learn more. I never thought about what would happen if she wasn't -- I never even thought she would do something like that. I mean, it's *Willow*." She looked down at her feet. "Willow is by definition good. With the scruples and good intentions and all. This is so hard to take in."

Tara shook her head. "No, no, it's not your fault at all. It's no one's fault except Willow's. Nobody told her to get into dark magic. I'm just worried what's going to happen now."

Buffy came to her feet and began pacing. "Oh, everything's going to hell. What's the matter with the world? Xander and Anya are second-thoughting themselves out of an engagement, Willow's gone all Anakin Skywalker on us, you don't want to hang out with us anymore, and I'm about halfway to giving in with Spike, and --." She broke off when Tara interrupted.

"You're *what" Tara looked surprised and then slightly guilty for bursting out like that. "I-I mean, you're halfway to giving in to what? With Spike?"

Buffy looked horrified. "Nothing! I didn't mean to say that. Not out loud, anyway. No giving in. No Spike. No more poorly considered sentences slipping past my mouth again, either." She flopped to the bench again and shut her mouth. "Shit."

"Buffy, Spike's a vampire. You have to think about what you're doing."

"I'm doing nothing. Nothing. Not going to happen. Ever." She looked staunch for about five seconds and then, she couldn't stop what came out of her mouth. "But I want to," she whispered. "That's what's so scary."

"Wow." Tara looked stunned, herself, for a moment. "You're interested in Spike? We're talking about the same thing here, right? Arrogant and snarky Spike? With the whole long rap sheet of dead Slayers? Not to mention dead ordinary people? Buffy, you can't be serious."

Buffy bit her lip. "I can't be, but somehow I am. I don't know what's the matter with me. I can just imagine telling Xander I was going out with Spike. Can you see it? He'd never shut up. And I know he's right. Spike is a evil vampire, he's not even slightly remorseful like Angel was, he's just on a leash. And if he ever slipped the leash he'd probably try to kill me again. I mean, the best-case scenario here is that he'd kill me right away and then leave, unlike Angel, 'cause when he turned he was all about the stalking and mental torture." She tried to smile. "I mean, at least when normal guys break up with you, they only leave you all depressed and feeling unwanted, not dead."

She paused to think. "But he's also the only person around who seemed to be entirely happy that I was back, who didn't seem to want something from me. He was -- he was kind to me." Her voice held a kind of wonder for a second before she returned to her normal businesslike tone. "It's not natural. Vampires aren't supposed to be nice. And I don't understand him. The progression. I mean, the chip really just prevents him from causing physical harm to a human. Big deal. There's a world of mental anguish to be explored, or minions to be led, minions who would happily get involved with an attempt to kill me. The chip doesn't make him want to kill demons, or not want to kill humans. *It* didn't change him. So why is he so different?" She sounded a little peevish by the end.

Tara sat silently and listened to Buffy's rant. "I don't know," she finally said. "I guess I never really thought about it. I mean, I never knew him before he had the chip. Was he really that bad?"

Buffy laughed a little bit. "He came in to town after I killed the Master. After I killed the Master's bones. There was this vamp, a little kid vamp, who was trying to resurrect the Master, called the Anointed One. Anointed with what, I don't know. Anyways, Spike and Dru came to town one day and they dusted the Anointed One, and from then on, they plagued me. That was our junior year and our principal -- who was literally evil, as you may have heard -- had assigned me to work on the Parents' Night decorations. And I was so worried about it. I mean, at that point, my mom didn't know I was the Slayer. She just thought I was a terrible student and a troublemaker at school. I was always letting her down."

Buffy's face had taken on a sorrowful expression, which gradually relaxed as she went on. "Anyway, we were trying so hard to make Parents' Night a success. Or at least prevent a total meltdown. I made lemonade, and it was awful. I forgot the sugar." A crooked, nostalgic smile crossed her face. "And Willow was too nice to tell me, but she served some to Cordelia when Cordy said something catty. I miss high school. Things were simpler then. Anyways, Parents' Night was going pretty well. And then Spike's gang busted in."

Tara looked interested. "I don't think I've ever heard this story. I just heard he was a bad guy and, like, legendary evil, but then chip and poof, tame puppy who likes to growl but has no teeth."

Buffy snorted. "He has teeth. They're just verbal now. Anyway, Spike broke into the school and his gang was running around scaring everybody. They were looking for me. I'd actually run into Spike a couple of days before, at the Bronze, but I didn't know who he was then. Just some skanky vamp with a Billy Idol fixation and some sort of sleazy-sounding accent, and an ego the size of Texas. He made some sort of typical blustering vamp-Slayer threat and went away, so I didn't think much of it until he showed up at the school that night.

"He came in and was all, 'Slayer! Grr!' and chasing me around. He actually had me down at one point. And then my mom came after him with a fire axe and she got in his face and was all, 'Get the hell away from my daughter!' He ran, after that. My mom had guts." She smiled. "So that was our first real meeting with Spike."

Tara looked at her. "You're smiling, and clearly everyone's alive, so either it gets better or it gets funnier or something."

Buffy cleared her throat. "Yeah, the sad tale of the downfall of William the Bloody at the hands of Sunnydale goes on. He was actually here at the hellmouth trying to help Drusilla. She was sick or poisoned or something, I've never been really clear on this part and it's Drusilla, so, hey, I don't really care. It was from something that happened before they got here. And a little while after that Angel and I, well, Angel lost his soul and became Angelus, who really *was* a legendary evil. He killed Ms. Calendar, and stalked my mom and Willow and me. He chummed around with Spike and Dru a lot, only it turns out that he was mostly there to rip on Spike and hit on Dru, because Dru had this weird sort of Oedipus complex about him, and Angelus got this idea to bring back a demon called the Judge who could burn humans up with only a touch, and, it was said, couldn't be killed with any weapon made by man. Xander saved the day on that one. Big guns. Artillery, I mean. He got me a rocket launcher. Little flying blue Judge bits all over the mall. *Really* gross.

"But Angelus didn't stop there. He went on to get this demon Acathla fedexed to Sunnydale for Dru. Acathla was going to suck the world into hell unless I could kill Angel before he summoned him. And that's when Spike came to ask for my help.

"Spike wanted to stop Angel from ending the world. He said he'd help me stop Angel if I'd let him and Dru escape. So I agreed. It wasn't exactly a match made in hell, but it wasn't the most trusting partnership. But we won." A fleeting smile crossed her face before sadness came back. "I killed Angel, and he went to hell instead of the world. And I let Spike and Dru flee Sunnydale. That was the last we saw of him for a while.

"He came back senior year. Dru had dumped him. He kidnapped Willow and Xander to force Willow to do a love spell, to get Dru back. I suppose we should have realized then that something was up, if Willow was powerful enough of a witch to draw Spike's attention when he needed big mojo. Anyways, Angel was back then, and the three of us were trapped in the magic store against a bunch of vamps, and we had to work together to get rid of them. Angel and Spike *really* hate each other. I don't understand how that whole little bizarre love triangle of theirs lasted longer than two weeks without them killing each other, I really don't.

"Anyways, Spike decided he didn't need a spell to get Dru back and disappeared again. Everyone heaves huge sigh of relief...at least on the Spike front. Other stuff was pretty bad at the time.

"Then, he shows up again just after we start in at college. I mean, the guy has a thing for disrupting midterms. Shows up looking for this magic ring called the Gem of Amara. It makes a vampire invincible by the regular means -- staking doesn't work, sunlight doesn't burn. I don't remember if beheading works or not. So he gets it, right? Drills a hole into some ancient crypt, which collapses a whole section of street, which is how we found out where he was. Brilliant planner, Spike. Not so good with the whole secrecy thing.

"So, I'm at school and he comes at me in daylight. I knew he had the ring, obviously. Huge fight. Story in the campus paper the next day had it as a massive gang turf war. Guess papers don't need witnesses anymore to corroborate their stories. I managed to get the upper hand, mostly because he kept taunting me about Parker, this jerk who had just dumped me, and Angel. He pissed me off so much I wouldn't back down. I got a hold of his hand and pulled the ring off, and he took off. Next thing I know, he shows up at Giles' door begging for help."

Tara looked amused. "Bet Giles loved that."

Buffy smiled. "I think he did. In some little way that only grown-ups understand. We chained Spike up in Giles' bathtub and fed him pig's blood out of novelty coffee mugs. It was the funniest thing. I can say that now because it's like two years ago. It wasn't funny at the time. We were trying to figure out who these commandos running around campus were. The Initiative, of course. They'd zapped Spike with a cattle prod and surgeried him up with Professor Walsh's chip. And he couldn't hurt any of us. He would still try, if one of us pissed him off. There was this one point I was trying to get information out of him and he was not coming through with the goods, so I did this thing." She giggled. "I tilted my head, like so," and tilted her head off to the side, baring her neck, "and said, 'oh, look at my neck, it's all warm and with such a nice jugular vein full of yummy warm blood,' taunted him, and he got so upset he was practically screaming at me. Keep in mind he was still chained in the bathtub at that point.

"And it took him a little while before he figured out that he could still hurt demons. Once that happened, well," she shrugged. "It was all over for Spike as the big bad. The other demons knew he was working with us, or that he was at least working against them, and he's sort of shut out now."

She thought for a second. "You know, now that you've got me thinking, I don't know if he was really all that bad or if he was just lucky."

Tara looked at her. "So, getting back to what you said. You honestly are thinking about, I don't know, some sort of relationship with Spike?"

Buffy looked aghast. "Eeyugh. No. Even if he wasn't up to Angelus' level of cruelty, he still killed who knows how many people. Made who knows how many other vampires. Tried to kill me at least a couple of times. Tried to kill my friends. It's not like he just has no taste in movies or something. We're talking 'psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est.' But there's something about him."

"What if he really has changed?" Tara asked. "He took care of Dawn while you were-- while you were away. None of us had to ask him. He just did. Even Giles sort of came around on him, at least, until he left for England. Giles was treating him as though he was a teenage son who borrowed his car; he trusted him somewhat, but he still had a nice insurance policy."

Buffy chuckled. "Nice analogy."

Tara smiled. "Xander still talked like he couldn't stand him, but he was usually the first to suggest Spike look after Dawn if we needed a babysitter. Dawn loves him, of course. He's her big brother."

"She yelled at me once, because she knew he had a thing for me and I didn't know. That's how I found out. Dawn told me. How embarassing is that, your little sister has to tell you when a guy is interested in you?"

Buffy looked animated, more into the conversation than anything else Tara had seen since her resurrection. Privately, she thought that it was maybe a good thing if Spike got this sort of reaction, at least something was getting Buffy's notice these days other than Willow's darkness and Giles' departure or other depressing events.

Buffy got to her feet and looked around the quad area. "Listen, do you want to go someplace where it's a little bit less likely that someone is going to try and jump us, like get some coffee and catch up? I feel like if we stay out here talking and looking all victimy I'm going to end up putting in overtime, and I've had enough hand-to-hand for one night, I think."

Tara looked surprised and a little bit pleased. "Sure. The Espresso Pump isn't far if you wanted to go hang out over there."

"That'd be great." Buffy smiled.

They arrived at the cafe and ordered their drinks, finding a table out by the street so that Buffy could watch outside in case anything came up.

"So. How is Dawnie, really?" Tara asked. "I mean, not how does she say she is."

"Well," she started, "I'm not sure. She doesn't talk to me much. It's kind of like she doesn't want me to know that she thinks I don't care about her or something like that. I'm not really sure. She's got this English project, a paper she has to write about the book _Dracula_, and she seemed really excited about that at first but now, I'm not so sure. I think it kind of took some of the wind out of her sails when I wasn't all 'yay Dracula' when she told me. I mean, I'm happy to help her with the paper, but I didn't really want to relive that extremely embarassing week for the amusement of her peers. I don't know."

Buffy sipped at the coffee disinterestedly. "I'm not sure what the fine line is between helping with homework and doing her homework for her, either. She asked for Willow's help with studying for an algebra exam and Willow was even less enthused than I was. Which was weird because, you know, Willow and school, they're like...Willow and school. Which is to say, a phrase that goes together and shouldn't be separated into its individual parts. This whole responsible adult example thing is much more difficult than Mom made it seem."

"Which brings us back to other responsible adult topics."

Buffy blinked. "Oh. You mean Spike."

"Yeah. Sorry, having problems getting past that in my head. Are you serious about wanting to, hmm, spend more time with him?"

"Serious? Who's serious?" Buffy tossed back. She then sighed and shook her head. "I'm not serious about anything to do with Spike, other than if he doesn't knock off the annoying commentary with everything to do with me, I won't be held responsible for my actions." Another coffee sip. "Okay, maybe I'm a little bit intrigued by the possibility. Who wouldn't be? Some incredible-looking guy comes up to you and claims he's in love with you, you're going to pay attention by default."

Tara smiled. "I suppose I can see your point. But how do you resolve the fact that he's, literally, not human?"

"I don't resolve anything. I haven't resolved anything, if I had, I wouldn't be all confused, I'd be either staking or-- or something else entirely different." Buffy looked rather uncomfortable. "I don't know what to think," she confessed.

Tara took another drink of her coffee and thought about it for a few minutes, while Buffy stared at the street grumpily. "Nothing's ever very easy, is it," Tara said with such genuine disgust that Buffy laughed.

"No. Why not? You'd think we deserved a little bit of easy after a while. Somewhere out there, there's a couple of women having amazingly easy lives because karma got our wires crossed." She became serious after a second. "You know what I think, Tara? I think that if it wasn't for Xander and Willow and Dawn, I'd give it a shot, but I can't, because Dawn's evidently already about a millimeter away from dating any vampire she happens to think is reasonably cute, and Xander would kill me and maybe not figuratively, either, and Willow -- I guess it wouldn't be very effective to try and talk her out of using dark magic if I'm boinking the evil dead."

Tara looked at her. "You know, you can't always live by what your family thinks. And if anybody in this stinkin' town has the right to say that, it's me." She smiled crookedly. "I even got the punch in the nose to prove that I don't have to listen to my family. So what's the real reason?"

"That is the real reason! I swear. Or at least most of it." She tossed her empty coffee cup across the table to the trash can, almost making it. She got up and put it in the bin before sitting back down. She loked contemplative. "Okay, maybe not the only reason. I guess there's a little bit of ... a lot bit of fear. Is it wrong to be scared of what would happen?"

Tara reached across the table and patted Buffy's hand. "Of course not. But I think it might be wrong to let everything you do be guided by fear."

Buffy looked at Tara's hand. "I wish things were different and you were still comfortable hanging out with the Scooby gang. You're all voice of reasony. We need that."

Tara looked sad but smiled. "Yeah. Fortunately, I'm not too far away if you want to talk to me. And, who knows? Maybe Willow will be able to get herself under control and then I can be on the research team again."

"Yeah. I hope so." She looked up briefly, and then began toying with a napkin on the table. "So do you have any sage advice for me?"

"Sage advice, specifically? Not really." She smiled. "I might have some joe-regular ordinary advice that nobody knows whether it would turn out better or worse if you used it-type advice. If you want to hear it," she added.

Buffy looked up, and the painful uncertainty in her eyes made Tara wish she had something better to say.

"I know it sounds cheesy, but I think you have to do what you want, not what Dawn or Willow or Xander wants. You have to live your life, not them, and nobody else can figure out what's best for you. Which is kind of vague advice, I admit." She smiled, and it lit up her face with the first genuine amusement Buffy had seen her show all night. "So, I think you should maybe go by Spike's some time, you know, just to hang out, or ask him to go get coffee. Maybe he is someone you could be happy with. But you won't ever know unless you give him a chance. I know you're scared of being hurt, we all are, but personally? As long as I'm talking in cliche today, I think it's better to be hurt and know that you didn't pass up something that could have been really good." Tara finished her own drink, now cold. "And my advice and two bucks will get you a coffee, as long as you're not into extra foam-skim-mocha-choco-latte-extra whipped cream-with biscotti sort of coffee...."

Buffy smiled. "Don't sell yourself short, Tara." This time, it was she who squeezed Tara's hand. "You're a good friend and a good person. And I'm so, so sorry about Willow."

Tara tried to smile again, but it faltered and Buffy could tell she didn't really mean it. "It's okay. I'm getting better all the time, really." She pushed back her chair and stood up, and walked to throw her coffee cup away. Buffy stood up as well, and they walked out of the coffee shop to the empty street outside.