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DISCLAIMER: Hah!
SUMMARY: PG. It was supposed to be a normal night. And then it wasn't.
WORDCOUNT: 509
NOTES: for Sunlit
SAFETY
by Leni
It was supposed to be just another Friday night. With the witches gone to their private
weekly hide-out, Harris and his girl stuck in his apartment for the weekend and the
Buffybot keeping the Sunnydale streets free of evil.
Until Dawn realised that they were out of popcorn. From then on it had been a nosedive
into disaster, and it was only getting worse. What if--? Spike stopped that train of
thought, focusing on tracking Dawn’s faint traces. He shook his head in defeat. He
wasn’t a tracker, never had been. He couldn’t find a working telephone booth and
call her friends. Damn that gang, he thought angrily, the witches were surely enjoying
what they couldn’t with an impressionable girl at home, the other two were doing
God-knew-what God-knew-where.
And Spike still couldn’t find Dawn.
They had discussed for almost an hour until he finally gave up and agreed to go with her
to the next store. They were supposed to get in, grab a bag of popcorn, maybe some soda
and get straight back to the house.
Of course that hadn’t happened.
They weren’t even a block away from the store when Dawn had shrieked from beside him.
Before Spike could react something had hit him solidly from behind. It was the rain which
woke him up. He straightened just to find Dawn gone.
Gone.
And he couldn’t find even her friends.
Weeks later demons would avoid contact with him, other vampires would fear cross his way.
It would be two months until he was accepted back to his usual haunts. But that night he
cared nothing for the repercussions. He used – and abused – every contact he
knew, trashed Willy’s bar until the bartender had surrendered a couple extra names.
It was by these latter that he’d finally found the trace he’d sought.
Not a moment too early, too.
With only half an hour to go until sunrise, he had finally found the girl in the woods.
Abandoned on top of a makeshift altar, her hair matted around her face in drenched
tendrils. For two horrible seconds he hadn’t been able to pick on her heartbeat and
when he finally did... Spike didn’t remember anything but kneeling beside Dawn and
stroking her hairline carefully, half expecting her eyes to open and her petulant teenager
voice to state that she was okay.
But she wasn’t.
He had already looped his arms under her armpits and was about to hoist her up when her
eyes opened sluggishly and stared unfocused into his.
“Buffy?”
Spike’s head dropped until his chin hit his chest. No, he wasn’t Buffy. He
wasn’t the Spike who wouldn’t have cared about leaving the girl here. He
wasn’t even the Spike who would rescue and protect Dawn solely because of a promise.
Who was he? Who?
Dawn moaned again and he saw the bruises already deepening on her forearms. Spike cradled
her carefully before picking her up, not wanting to disturb her.
Who ever he was, he had only twenty minutes to take Dawn to safety.
The End
01/07/04
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