“I said no!”

“But I have to go out into the field SOMEtime!”

“Not if I can help it,” Spike muttered under his breath as he selected another weapon from the chest. They had this argument every time he and Buffy went out on patrol. Spike was terrified that one day the lil’ bit was going to win it. As he rummaged through the battered old box, his hand touched upon a bit of plastic. He stopped to look at the object, finding it was a plastic stake. Riley had used it once on him, to scare him. He’d saved the stake, as I reminder of what might happen if he let his guard down. Later Cerberus had found it in his crypt, and used it as a chewtoy. He glared at the dog.

**Don’t go leavin’ your toys in Buffy’s playchest…**

The dog ignored him, intent on a piece of paper on the floor.

“What’s that, Buffy’s training stake or something?” Dawn laughed at the chewed bit of plastic in his hand.

Spike got an idea. “Yeah, Nibblet. Tell ya what. You manage to stake me with this, an’ I’ll let yeh come with t’night. Awright?”

Dawn clapped her hands together gleefully, and followed Spike out into the backyard.

As they left the room, Buffy came down the stairs, ready for the night’s outing. She looked around the room, and saw only Cerberus. She noticed him staring at his bit of paper and came over to see what on earth about it could hold a dog’s interest. Upon closer inspection, she saw that it was a postcard, covered in what looked like a child’s scrawl. It read:

“Cerbie- Having a wonderful time in Bali. Learn to read and write. Your friend, Nicky.”

**Dawn said this came for me today. She told me what it says. I’m trying to figure out how to relate the words to these markings. And trying to figure out how a rabbit holds a pencil. Can you teach me how to read?**

Buffy ruminated for a moment on how crazy the situation would seem to a normal person, just having a dog SPEAK to you much less want to learn to read, and receiving postcards from literary rabbits to boot. Never mind the fact that both animals were vampires. Then she shrugged. Who was she to talk, she who killed demons and had been brought back from death into a clone of herself? She’d given up being normal a long time ago.

“I think we might have some of my old kid’s books in the basement,” she offered helpfully.

“BLOODY HELL!!!” came the cry from the open patio door. Buffy and Cerberus didn’t hesitate a moment as they ran outside to see what was the matter. Buffy nearly tripped when she saw what it was.

Spike had a stake sticking out of his chest. For a moment, Buffy thought this was the end, but then she realised he wasn’t going “poof”. She was surprised at how relieved she was. Their relationship was very new, very unexpected. She still couldn’t believe that she loved him, her one-time hated enemy. As it was, they were taking it VERY slow. They hadn’t even gone out on a date yet, done nothing more than kiss a little. And now here she was rushing out to see if he was ok, actually TERRIFIED he’d been dusted.

Then she noticed her sister dancing for joy. She looked at the younger girl in horror. “Did YOU do this?!?”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?”

Ok, now Buffy was REALLY beginning to feel like she was in the Twilight Zone. “Dawn, look how close you came to his heart, you could have KILLED him!” she reprimanded her sister as she walked over to a dejected-looking vamp.

“Uh, to be fair, she DID get it through the heart,’ he told her as she grabbed onto the stake to pull it out. She felt another twinge of panic, until she realised that the stake was plastic.

As relief flooded through her, she couldn’t keep from giggling. She hoped neither of them heard the hysteria in her laughter.

Dawn laughed too, and added happily, “Now I get to go with you tonight!”

Buffy’s giggles stopped cold. She gave the vamp a look that was equal parts horror and anger. “Excuse me? TELL me you didn’t tell her that she could go with if she managed to prove she could stake a vamp!”

Spike managed a weak smile, laughing nervously, “Uh, okay, ‘I didn’t tell your sister that she could go with tonight if she mana-‘”

“You’re a lousy liar, Spike.” She held up the stake, eyeing it. “I’m suddenly wishing this WAS a real stake.”

“C’mon, Buffy, I have to try SOMEti--“

“No you don’t.”

“But I’m a Slayer-in-wai--“

“No you’re not. Because there are already TWO Slayers, and I don’t intend to die again anytime soon! Now you are BOTH staying here, and I’m going ALONE.” She handed Dawn the stake. “Have fun with Mr. Pincushion.” And with that, she stormed off.

Dawn tried to follow, but Spike grabbed her arm. “Let it go, Nibblet. I’ll talk to ‘er when she gets back. For now, you can ‘ave another go with me.”

Dawn pulled loose angrily. “I don’t want to keep sparring with YOU all the time! I want to fight a REAL vampire!” Spike flinched at that, but she didn’t noticed, too caught up in her own teen dramatics. “Doesn’t she understand, I’m not trying to take her place! I just want to HELP, like the rest of the Slayerettes! I thought being named a Slayer-in-waiting would convince her that I can fight too!”

“Nibblet, she just worries is all. And a Slayer who worries is a Slayer who’s distracted. That’s not a good thing! You don’t want ‘er to get hurt again, right?”

Dawn bit her lip and shook her head.

“Buffy just wants for you what she could never have—a NORMAL life,” he told her as he walked her back into the house.

“It’s not really like my life will ever BE normal, though. And I don’t WANT it to be. Normal people don’t have vampires and witches for best friends.”

He smiled and ruffled her hair. “But they do watch television and eat ice cream…”

The next morning Anya found a surprise under her pillow.

“THAT JERK! HE RIPPED ME OFF!!!!”

Xander woke with a start, scrambling for the stake he kept in the nightstand. He found it and crouched on the bed, looking about for a foe.

Then he noticed Anya was holding out her hand to him. “Look at this!”

He did as he was told, thinking maybe the enemy was some little tiny thing. It looked like a quarter. He had the feeling he wasn’t understanding something, but it was hard to tell when the important part of his brain, the one that dealt with cognitive thought, was apparently still asleep…

“It’s a quarter!” she informed him.

Ok, so it really was a quarter then. “Um… yeah. Uh, where’d ya get it?”

“It was under my pillow!”

He laughed at that. “Heh, whadja do, An, loose a tooth?”

“I might as well have! I mean, that thing was worth a few THOUSAND, and he only give me a lousy 25 cents?!?! I thought if ANYbody would be interested in a rare dragon tooth, the TOOTH Fairy would be! No one else seemed to want it!”

Xander blinked. “There really is a tooth fairy?”

Anya looked at him like he was insane. “I suppose next you’ll be telling me you don’t believe in that murdering Easter Bunny! Hey! I bet the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are in cahoots! Yeah! The Bunny brings candy to rot little children’s teeth, and then the Tooth Fairy collects them!”

Xander sighed. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to have a normal life…

Willow held her breathe as she cleaned up the mess left behind the wake of her last spell. She made a mental note to check the expiration dates on all her ingredients next time.

“Well that’s one way to get me up.” Tara told her. Or rather, “Thads wode way do ged me ub,” as she plugged her nose against the assailing stench of old Lowark Demon spore and rotted food..

“What, you don’t like the smell of freshly baked demon droppings in a garbage sauce first thing in the morning?” Willow quipped. Then she looked down at the mess with a sigh.

Tara grabbed a few towels and helped her with the cleanup.

“Thanks.” Willow smiled at her.

“So what were you trying to do?”

“Well, we got a lot of junkmail yesterday, and I was thinking, ‘Gee, if only we could eat this stuff, no one would ever go hungry again.”

“…Sooooo… you were trying to make our mail edible?”

“Well.. sorta. See, I found this spell that makes images real. I though I could take the food coupons in this flyer here and make it real…”

Tara looked ill. “Uh, Willow, you realise that that spell just makes the image out of the demon spore, don’t you? I mean, the food would be MADE from—“

“Well, I didn’t think it would TASTE like it! And we eat stuff grown in cow manure, I thought maybe once I figured out how the spell worked I might substitute that for some of the spore, kinda like a filler… It’s a lot cheaper in the long run than real food.”

Tara gave Willow a serious look. “Sweetie, are we THAT badly off?”

Willow sighed. “Well, we’re not destitute, but yeah, we could be better. But who I really worry about is Buffy. Slayin’ and spellwork don’t exactly pay the bills, and with all us going to school and working AND slaying… I don’t see how we can all keep it up, ESPECIALLY not her. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off living like normal people, forgetting the magic and all that goes with it…”

Spike walked into the kitchen that morning to find Buffy staring at her knee. His brow furrowed in concern as he sat down beside her. “Did you hurt yourself last night?”

“No.” He couldn’t tell if she was being cold or preoccupied. He sat in silence, wondering if he should say something when she spoke again. “It’s weird. I look like me, I feel like me, but then I notice the little things… Like where did that scar I got when I fell off my bike go? Where’s that slight little hitch I have in my ankle from when I broke it?”

“Um… Pet, clones only copy your DNA, you’re body is the way it would have been if—“

“--nothing had ever happened to me. I know. It’s… disconcerting. Like I didn’t exist before.”

“Join the club.” Dawn sat down at the table, dressed already. She shrugged as she tied her shoes. “You get used to it, the idea that you didn’t really live the life you thought you did. And then you start to forget, and those things from your life that aren’t really yours feel enough like they are that it doesn’t matter what the truth is. Until someone hands you something REAL, something that IS yours, and someone ELSE won't let you use it.”

“Dawnie--“

“You got your own life back, why do you have to keep taking mine?! I was the Key, I was the one who was supposed to seal the portal, but you took my place! And now I’m a Slayer-in-waiting, but you wont let me be that either! So what am I, Buffy? You want me to live the normal life YOU always wanted, but what if I don’t WANT that? I may not have actually lived the life I remember, but I can START living now, by contributing to the world I live in and fulfilling the role I’ve been given. What do you expect me to do, just hand out at the mall and go to the movies and gossip about boys all day?! Live like my empty-headed peers who don’t know what real fear or real pain or real LOVE is? Well I’m sorry, but that’s too mundane for me! Like it or not, Buffy, being your sister means monsters and magic IS normal for me, and no amount of closing your eyes and wishing it would all just go away is going to change that! I’m going to the magic shop for a reality check!” With that, she stomped out of the room and out the front door.

Buffy put her head in her hands. “God, now I know how my mother felt…”

Spike reached out and rubbed her shoulder. “Look, love, about yesterday…”

She looked up at him and took his hand in hers. “It’s ok. I’m sorry I overreacted. I know you were trying to KEEP her from going with, and trying to be fair it her too. So how DID she manage to stake you?”

Spike sighed. “She said something to me yesterday… maybe she’s right. She said, ‘I want to fight against a REAL vampire’. Maybe… maybe I’m losing my edge?”

Buffy smiled. “Or maybe you just were too afraid of hurting her.”

Spike got up with a growl of frustration and began to pace the room. “But that’s just it! Until I met you, I was ‘The Big Bad!’ Now look at me! I fall in love with the Slayer and suddenly I’m Mr. Fluffy Puppy with Bad Teeth! Buffy, I love you, don’t take this the wrong way—“ he sank back into the chair, “but I was a better VAMPIRE when I was.. well, EVIL… What am I now? Sometimes I wish I’d never become a vampire, that I’d lived a normal life, so I wouldn’t know what I’m missing now…”

“We did quite well today,” Anya chirped happily as she counted out the money.

A normal shopkeeper who didn’t have an ex-demon for a partner.

“What does this say?” Dawn asked from the table. She had a stack of old tomes by her, and was looking at the musty pages of another. She had asked Giles, Spike, Willow, and Tara to teach her about old alphabets so she could help in research. Unfortunately, she had asked them in front of Travers, who had thought it was an excellent idea.

Giles sighed and looked at the passage she was pointing to. Then the scholar in him perked up it’s sleepy head with interest. “Huh. Interesting. It’s a spell too drive out magic from a town.”

“Drive out? You mean like chase away demons? That could be useful!”

“Yes… Yes it could! Let me see that…” He sat down beside her and began to read.

There was a knock at the door. Anya let in Xander, Willow and Tara. A little later there was another knock, and Anya let Buffy, Spike, and Cerberus in. Giles and Dawn showed Willow the book while Anya and Tara chatted with Buffy and Spike and Xander played with the dog.

“Check out what I taught Cerberus today,” Spike told Xander. He went over to the table and gabbed a pen and Dawn’s notebook. He laid the notebook down on the floor with an empty page showing, and put the pencil in the dog’s mouth so that he was holding the cap in his teeth and the pen was point-down.

Cerberus pressed the pen tip to the paper and began to move it along the page. When he stopped, Spike proudly handed the page to Xander. It read, in a very wobbly script, “Hi. I am Cerberus.”

“WHOA! That is such a cool trick!” Xander still didn’t think of Cerberus as anything but a dog.

“Well, it’s not a trick like ‘roll over’, he really can—“

“But we can at least TRY it!” Dawn’s outburst came from the group huddle by the table.

“It’s too dangerous,” Tara told her gently. “We don’t know exactly what the spell will do. We’ll hold onto it and study it, and if we figure it out, THEN we can try to cast it.”

“Besides,” Giles added. “We don’t even know what a “blessed dungfang” is…”

“Don’t be upset, Dawn!” Anya said in her irritatingly cheerful way. “Let me teach you a new trick I learned!” She reached out to Dawn’s ear, and appeared to have pulled a quarter out of it. She handed it to Dawn. “Now you try!”

Dawn smiled placatingly. “That’s ok, Anya, I doubt I could do it as well as you.”

Xander took the coin from her. “Heh, everybody seems to be learning new tricks today. Is this the coin you got from the Tooth Fairy, Anya?” Anya nodded. Xander flashed back to his thoughts from that morning. A normal life…

Giles took the coin from him. “So… is THIS is what happened to my missing dragon’s tooth?” He sighed internally. A normal life…

He looked over to Spike. “Hey, have you gotten paid yet?”

Spike scowled. “No.”

The council had said something about not NEEDING to pay a dead watcher. Giles was fighting on the bleached vamps behalf, figuring that Spike would undoubtedly use it on the Summers women, and they sorely needed it. He flipped the coin over to the vamp, who almost dropped it.

Spike sighed. His reflexes WERE getting bad. He thought about the fact that, if he had been made a Watcher all those years ago, when they were about to approach him and Dru beat them to the punch, how he WOULD be getting paid. If he’d lived out a normal life…

Buffy took the quarter from him. “You owe me still for the beer,” she teased him. She had bought it for him since he was living with them now. Living with a vampire. A Slayer living with a vampire. Why did she have to have these strange complications in her life at all? Why couldn’t she just go to school and work a normal job, and come home to a normal boyfriend? Live a normal life?

Willow walked over and took the coin from Buffy. She held it in her hand, blew into it, and showed everyone that it had disappeared, only to reappear in her other hand. Why couldn’t life be as simple as a parlor trick? Why couldn’t you just say the magic words and have everything turn out as they were supposed to? If magic worked that well, she would just wish for a normal life she would never NEED to use magic again. A normal life…

Willow smiled and gave the coin to Dawn. “Here, maybe learning a magic trick will keep you out of trouble…” She tousled the girls hair and left her to her books.

There was a yelp from across the room.

“Well what are you doing using petrified wood to play fetch with him?!” Spike snapped at Xander as he looked into the poor dog’s maw. There was a gap where one of his canine’s use to be.

“I found it!” Anya cried, holding up the missing tooth. She looked at it consideringly. “I wonder what price a vampire dog’s tooth would fetch…”

“ANYA!” Spike protested.

Dawn sat down, shaking her head at her friends’ antics. She rolled the coin along her fingers idly as she re-read the passage with the spell that had interested her. She read it aloud.

And promptly disappeared.

Spike and Cerberus dropped to the floor. Buffy shook Spike, concerned. He didn’t respond. He was like a true corpse. So was Cerberus.

Anya had been about to price an item when she realised it wasn’t there. Neither were several other items that were supposed to be next to it, all demon body parts. She looked about the room. “We’ve been robbed!”

Buffy looked around too, and noticed her sister wasn’t there. “Where’s Dawn?”

After they got no response from calling the girl’s name, Willow tried to talk to her telepathically. She got no response. She told Tara so, mind-to-mind, and asked her love what she thought they should do. And got no response. She tried doing a group sending. Still nothing. “My powers aren’t working!” Tara looked scared. “M-mine aren’t eith-ther!”

There was a knock at the door.

Anya walked warily over to the door and opened it. In floated a little fairy.

“Now you’ve done it! Which of you cast that spell?”

“What spell?” Giles asked it.

“The spell that drives magic out of a town!”

“None of us did!” Willow protested. “We don’t even know what a ‘blessed dung-fang’ is!”

The fairy laughed. “So what were you expecting then when that one over there left me the tooth under her pillow?” Anya’s eyes widened. “YOU’RE the little creep that ripped me off!”

Xander did a double take. “THAT’S the TOOTH FAIRY?”

“Well I’m sure as hell not the Easter Bunny!”

“But… you’re a GUY…”

“Your point being?”

Xander didn’t know what to say to that.

“Look, you people obviously don’t get how this works. You loose a tooth. You put it under you’re pillow. I EAT the tooth. I leave my dropping behind in exchange. You use my dropping to make a wish. The tooth you left me was an especially powerful one, so you should have been able to get a pretty big wish off it. Obviously you wished for all the magic here to go away, and that’s why yer two friends here are dead as doornails—no more demon magic to keep their corpses animated.”

Buffy choked back a sob as she brushed the cheek of the still vampire. She thought about what she had been thinking while she held the coin. So did Willow, Giles, and Xander.

“This is all my fault!” They all said at once. They looked about in confusion. “YOUR fault?” they said altogether. “I was the one who wished for a normal life!” It sounded like the words were being said in stereo.

The fairy shook his head. “Typical. You humans never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. You never see how magic holds the universe together, how utterly worthless it becomes without it! I don’t know why you insist on thinking magic is out of the ordinary, as if it isn’t apart of the real world…”

Buffy looked at Dawn’s empty seat. She finally understood what had happened. “Oh Dawnie!” she cried. Dawn had been made from magic. And when the magic was unmade, so was she.

“Th-there has to be some way to reverse it!” Tara insisted. “I-I m-mean, YOU’RE h-here, and y-you’re a magical creature…”

“Yes, well, magic worked by a dungfang does not affect me. So what you’ll be wanting is another dungfang, so you can still work magic in a magicless place. Have you a tooth?”

Anya looked about, but all the demon teeth had disappeared, like Dawn had. Then she remembered Cerberus’ fang. If the dog’s body was still there, maybe the tooth was?

Sure enough, she found it in Spike’s stiff hand. He had been trying to fit it back into the dog’s mouth when the spell was cast.

The fairy ate the tooth, then licked his fingers. “Now, er, yer privy?” Anya pointed to the back. The fairy was back in a few minutes with a shiny new quarter.

Anya took it from him. She realised she would never be able to look at money with quite the same respect again. Although in a roundabout way she now had more respect fort the value of a quarter than ever before. She handed the coin to Willow.

“What do I do?” Willow asked the little man. The fairy floated over to the open tome. He turned the page and pointed to a line. “First, think hard about your life as it was before, WITH the magic. Think hard about why you want it back, how MUCH you want it back. Remember that your friends’ lives and the lives of other magical creatures in this town depend on it. Resign yourself to taking the bad with the good. Then say the words of the reversal spell.”

Willow closed her eyes and concentrated. Tara placed her hands over her loves, adding her wish. The others Scoobies came over and did the same.

Willow thought about how she never would have met Buffy if not for vampires; odd as it sounded, she had reason to be thankful. She wouldn’t have met Tara, and Dawn, who was like her little sister, would never have been created, without magic as the catalyst. She thought about how excited she was to start her training as a witch, how good it felt to have the power moving through her and to learn new things. How alive she felt.

Giles thought about how he never would have met Buffy and the other Scoobies, who were like his children, if magic hadn’t made Watchers necessary. He realised now how boring his days would truly have been, how lonely and empty. Magic have given him life.

Xander understood too that magic was the whole reason he had met nearly everyone in his life who was dear to him, especially Anya. If she had spent all those years as a demon, she would have died a peasant girl.

Buffy also realised that she would never have come to Sunnydale. She would have lived out her days the shallow teenager she was before she was chosen, a worthless human being who would never help anyone. She would never have met her best friends or the man who was like a father to her when her own father was no such thing. She would never have met her first love, Angel, or her current love-- yes, she DID love him-- Spike. Both would have died long ago. Her sister would never have been made, and Buffy would have been alone when her mother died. And then she realised that Spike and Dawn WERE dead, at this moment, and she understood how badly they must have missed her when she was gone. She wanted them back, and Cerberus too, and would suffer anything to have them with her again.

Willow said the words.

“What’s with the group huddle?” Dawn was looking at them like they’d lost their minds.

“And how did I end up lying on the floor?” came Spike’s vice from the other side of the room”.

Buffy didn’t know who to run to first.

The rest of the Scoobies went to Dawn, so Buffy went over to Spike to help him up. She pulled him into a fierce hug. “God, I thought I’d lost you!” She kissed him, then dragged him over to the table. She let go to give her sister a hug. She sat in the chair next to the younger girl and pulled her vampboy down beside her.

Giles explained to Dawn, Spike, and Cerberus what they had missed. He hoped that taught Dawn a lesson about messing with spells she didn’t understand.

“Oh yeah, sure, I’ll remember not to hold an enchanted fairy dropping next time I’m reading a spell…”

Later that evening, Spike was holding Buffy as they sat watching TV together on the couch. Dawn had gone to bed.

“You know, I’d never considered that before…” Spike murmured into her ear during a commercial break.

“Mmm, what’s that?”

“That if I hadn’t been made a vampire, I never would have met you.”

“Heh, I thought you said you would have been better off never having met me!”

“To be an evil vampire, it would have been better if I hadn’t. But I don’t WANT to be evil anymore. Lydia said that I could choose want kind of being I am, human, or vampire, or both. I was afraid being too human was making me soft, but… if that’s the price I pay for loving you, then I’d pay it a hundred times over, and gladly! I was being stupid, fretting over loosing what I WAS. Maybe I DID loose against Dawn simply because I was afraid of ‘urtin ‘er. I’m me, an’ right now that’s a bad boy that’s trying to be good, an’ I need you to help me do it. I don’t want to be evil, I don’t want to hurt you or Dawn, an’ I don’t want to be some dead poofter rotting in my grave. I don’t regret having been made a vampire anymore, it made me stronger than I was and it meant living to see you. I don’t regret getting this chip anymore, because it mad me step back and se how much I LOVED you. And now I can do more good than I ever could while I was alive.”

She smiled. “That didn’t make one bit of sense. Are you saying I have to take the bad with the good?”

He smiled back. “That’s exactly what I’m saying…” He kissed her, reminding them both of what putting up with the bad had gained them.