A/N: This is all Kantayra’s fault. At the end of her most excellent Double Spiked, she issued this throw away challenge: “OK, I know there are other B/S writers out there who have read this. And I think someone really has to write a S/B/B fic some day. After all, how fair is it that Buffy gets two Spikes, but Spike never gets two Buffys?” So here you go, Kantayra. Hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 1 Coming Apart
“This is all valuable merchandise, you know,” Anya complained.
“Which won’t do you any good if you’re dead,” Xander replied patiently as he opened another box. “We’re just looking for weapons. Everything else we’ll leave. I promise.”
Buffy knelt to open a footlocker, then hesitated. “No mummy hands?"
Anya sighed. “No, the only one I had escaped when the shop was destroyed. How do you explain that to the insurance company?”
Xander and Buffy looked at each other and grinned, turning back to their work so she wouldn’t see. Buffy popped the latches on the trunk and lifted the lid. “Wow!”
“What did you find?”
“A whole lot of . . . junk.” She began poking gingerly through the mish-mash, looking for anything useful.
“Ahn, that stuff’s mine.”
“Well, you weren’t around when I moved out, were you? I didn’t want to forget anything important, and you were always just throwing stuff in there and forgetting about it. I figured I’d sort through it and give you back your junk.”
“After you kept everything marketable.”
“Hey, you can sell anything on Ebay . . .”
“It’s probably just as well, Xander,” Buffy interrupted. “We wouldn’t have noticed it at your place with all the other stuff. So we would have missed out on this.” Her hand closed around an Initiative taser rifle tangled among the junk. “Doesn’t this bring back old . . .”
There was a blinding flash as she went sailing through the air to crash into the wall behind the couch. Xander and Anya raced to her side as she lay stunned on the sofa.
“Buffy? You okay? Buffy!”
“She’s not bleeding, is she? Please don’t let her be bleeding!”
Xander looked at her.
“I just had it steamed . . .”
Before Xander could berate her, Buffy groaned and tried to get up on her elbows. “I think I’m okay. Woozy.”
He took her elbow to help her to her feet. “C’mon, we’ll take you home so you can sleep it off.”
“Rifle,” she protested.
Anya grabbed it gingerly. “I’ve got it,” she said, following them out of the apartment.
The setting sun’s light filtered through the blinds at an ever-decreasing angle, highlighting the features of the girl resting peacefully on the couch. It was fully dark before she finally awoke, disoriented and alone in an apartment that wasn’t hers.
She sat up stiffly, as much from sleeping on the couch as from the blast she had taken hours earlier. “Xander?” she called into the darkened apartment as she checked herself for injuries. “Anya?” Still no answer. Why had they left her here alone when she might have been hurt by that energy discharge? Unless someone else had been hurt worse. Her eyes widened. That must be it. One of her friends had been hurt in the blast and they had gone to the hospital, leaving her here, unconscious but unharmed. The thought of Anya bleeding profusely while Xander rushed her to the emergency room in a panic brought tears to her eyes. She had to get home. They would know what was happening there.
If you want more story, then you must