Buffy goes home to see her mom and finds Spike having chocolate with her.
A request for explanations leads to unearthing some ethical issues about the Initiative and Joyce gets caught in the middle of a verbal fight between Buffy and Spike, for which she develops an interesting theory.
Set in S4, some time between eps. 4x11 “Doomed” and 4x12 “A New Man.”
Written for Pen & Paint 2024