65,346Crossing Shadow River, by dutchbuffy2305Rating: RTimeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into Unchipped Territory. You should read that if you want to know everything about how to cross dimensions, and how Buffy and Spike got to be together. If you insist in reading this first, this is the recap: Buffy met evil Spike when she accidentally fell in another dimension. Hijinks ensue. He returns souled Spike to her (I’m not telling how) and they lived happily ever after. I still think you should go read it first, my summary doesn’t quite do it justice…Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, ayinhara & mommanerd, sometime betas meko00 and LadyAnne. to the ladies from Tea at the Ford and Herself for some great pointers; i-digress-uk and deborahm for help with British dialogue.Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

Prologue

Spike gets home when the sun is setting in all its multicolored splendor, just like it does every day. He pays it no mind; the sunset miracle has repeated itself so often that it's not special anymore. He uses the last of the slanty rays to find and light his lamp and start a fire. He sniffs the soup, and decides it'll do if he heats it up long enough. And he doesn't much care if it kills him, although he supposes death from spoilt fish soup must be pretty wretched. He's got nothing to live for, anyway. Every day that he wakes up in one piece he wonders why he bothers.

He drops in half of today's catch of assorted fish, cleaned only roughly. He's tired and hungry and doesn’t fancy cleaning one properly and broiling it. Besides, he's out of oil. It's time to do the bartering rounds again. His fish for his neighbor's soup, Mrs. Jackson's oil. He doesn't even dream of a new set of clothes anymore. The ones he's got are bleached and grayed from the sun and many washings in salt water. He sits down wearily on the makeshift bench outside his cabin and sinks his head against the planks. God, his back hurts. He could really use a drink, but he drank his last bit of moonshine last night, when he was too drunk to care. He'll start up a fresh one tomorrow, if he gets home from his labors early enough.

Spike wakes up when the familiar odor of burnt fish reaches his nostrils. He rescues what's left of the soup and dunks in last week's bread, a gift from Mindy. Now he's got a crick in his neck as well as a backache. The moon peeks out over the Pacific and stretches out her silvery fingers over the water. Pretty. Bedtime. No point in wasting oil, nothing to read anyway. He's long sold what books he scavenged after the initial breakdown for food.

He's just about to heave himself off of his bench when a dark shadow obscures the moon. He can't suppress a tiny start of fear. There's nasty things that roam at night, and by day for that matter, and as he's not as strong as he used to be, nor as heedless; he tends to stay in and hope for the best. The fear subsides when he sees how small the form is, and feminine besides. He's got some kind of reputation among the scattered female inhabitants of the changed shoreline formerly known as LA, but he's too sore and tired to cater to their needs tonight.

"Spike?" a long forgotten voice says.

His hand goes automatically to the big flensing knife at his side. If whatever this is knows him well enough to mimic Buffy's voice, he could be in big trouble.

The shadow steps backwards and holds up her hands. "Hey. Don’t you remember me? Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer?"

He can’t seem to find his voice. It sounds real, and his virtually useless human nose picks up scents the like of which he hasn’t encountered in a decade. Perfume and shampoo, and freshly washed clothes. The things the survivors whisper about in hushed voices when they are huddled around the campfires.

"Look!" she says, in that happy perky voice that means she woke up in a soft bed, and breakfasted on coffee, fruit and cereal, things that would bring in more barter than the use of her pampered body.

She fishes around in what must be a purse and with a tiny click switches on a flashlight. It illuminates her face from underneath, but the effect is not scary.

"Put that away," Spike hisses and puts his hand on her indescribably soft and smooth arm. "They can see the light from miles away."

"Who’s they?" her voice says, amused.

"Could be anybody," Spike says and pulls her inside. "Lemme hold it."

She hands him the light without demur, which is an indication that she's not from here even more than her clean scent and well cared-for skin.

His finger remembers easily how to switch on a torch and he shines its trembling light on the apparition. It does look exactly like Buffy, how Buffy would have looked if she and 98 percent of the world's inhabitants hadn’t died in the last apocalypse. A well preserved thirty, smiling, dressed in colorful clothes of an unknown fashion, wearing actual shoes and rings and, anyway, real clothes. Somebody who hasn’t known hunger and deprivation for ten years, who hasn’t had to live off fish and scavenged cans, who hasn’t had to do with the one set of clothes for all this time, who showered this morning.

The flashlight thuds from his hand on the concrete floor of the hut.

"Buffy," he says stupidly. "You’re really Buffy. How?"

He staggers to his one chair and almost knocks over the sputtering oil lamp.

"The one and only,” she says. "Although that's not completely true actually. The only Buffy in this world."

"Yeah."

He doesn’t know where to go from this. His brain isn’t what it used to be after all this time of hunger and too much sun and booze. He latches on to the one important fact he can think of.

"Did you know I'm human? Shanshu'd after the apocalypse as my reward for being a hero?"

She laughs softly and kneels by his side. Her hands land warmly on his thighs and he twitches embarrassingly from the contact.

"I know. I bet you’re very proud of that, and it’s why I came. There aren't many human Spikes in all the different worlds, you know. You're a rarity."

He has no idea what she's talking about.

She interprets his silence correctly and laughs again, the soft self-assured sound like rain on his parched skin. Feelings he thought forgotten or withered away flare up. It's Buffy. His great love, the girl he lost, or the chance of her he lost by not joining her in Rome when he'd gotten resurrected. His cowardice gained him humanity and lost him love. What does her presence mean?

"How? Why?" he stutters, utterly confused by her close warm presence. He reaches out for her and his hand folds eagerly around a soft silk-encased shoulder.

"I'll try to explain it in short words," Buffy says and stands up. "Is there anywhere I can sit? Is this the bed?"

God, he's so ashamed he's got nothing better to offer than the bed, a sad mockery of the real thing in the form of an old mattress with a couple of ratty blankets and duvets.

"Yeah. Sorry, it’s not much, but I…"

"Hey. It's fine, it’s not important. Anyway. According to Willow, every decision anybody makes causes a new world to split off where this decision wasn't made. So there are a million possible Spikes, and a million possible Buffys, and also worlds where none of us has ever existed. Willow – you do remember her, don’t you?- made a device to cross over to other realities."

"And so you are from a different world?" he asks in wonder. "Where you didn't die."

"Not even the tiniest apocalypse in years now," she says gaily. ”Which is good."

"And no Spike I guess?"

She hesitates. He may not be a vampire anymore, but he's not turned into a fool. She's gonna lie, or avoid the truth. What for?

"There is a Spike," she says at last.

He knows there is more, but he's dizzy with her presence and doesn’t want to press the issue and risk her displeasure.

"Why come here? For me?" He hardly dares hope this will be the case. There hasn’t been anyone for him for so long.

"Yes, for you," she says sweetly and reaches up to cup his cheek. She exclaims softly in surprise. "So rough! Do you have to shave now?"

"Of course," he says defensively. "And shit and eat and sleep. The whole works."

She comes even closer. "That's good. Why don’t you come sit beside me?"

He can hardly see her, the lamp doesn't give that much light, but he hears her pat the blankets. Hope and lust crash through him. Buffy. The chance to hold her in his arms again after so long. He stumbles down next to her and her hands are on his arms, softly stroking.

"So warm," she says, surprised and intrigued. "So…male."

His heart does a polka and his dick stands up like it hasn't in years. A diet of fish does not a horny man make.

"Buffy?" he says. "Do you…?"

"Shh…." She says and guides his face to hers. "Kiss me."

He's not so addled that he doesn't know there has to be a catch. Slayers don’t just travel worlds to give their ex-lovers a shag for nothing. He thinks that whatever the catch turns out to be, he’ll gladly pay the price to have her in his arms once more.

She kisses him and the taste of her mouth is the sweetest thing that's happened to him in forever. Her skin so soft and fragrant, her hair, the sleekness of her body, he's dazzled, helplessly enthralled by her sheer presence. Her face is not such a sharp memory anymore after all this time, but her scent and the weight of her breasts have never left him. He's half ashamed of his rough skin, his unbrushed teeth, his thighs that tremble with fatigue, but she's like an angel, he's never known her to be this soft and accommodating. She rides him, guides his cock into the velvet haven of her pussy. He loses it, of course, the impact of all these heavenly delights on his senses is too big for any kind of restraint.

"Buffy, I'm…unh…I'm sorry, I…"

She doesn’t seem to mind. "Shh, you're tired, sweet Spike, let’s lie down together and sleep."

He's falling like he's been hit over the head, straight into the infinite gentleness and softness of his dream Buffy, who presides over his sleep like she always does, and she's less fuzzy and undefined than she had become.

He wakes up with his nose in her hair, and it should be the best awakening ever. The thing is that age, deprivation and a hard bed rob him of the glorious morning after feeling he should have had. His joints ache in the morning, and his arm is asleep where she's lying on it. He's hungry and thirsty and he needs to pee. He tries to slide out from under her silken weight without her noticing but she sighs deeply and snuggles her soft arse against his disappointingly unerect cock.

"Spike?"

Her smile is like the sunrise, but he's not yet in a fit state to appreciate it. He gets up with a groan as his muscles and back protest and stumbles outside. When he gets back, with one less urge, she's sitting on the bed like a goddess, all golden skin and bronze locks, brushing her hair with languid movements. Her breast jiggle softly and the gleam of her thighs, the spread of her hips on the bed stir his lagging appetites. He dips a beaker of short beer for her out of his meager stock and offers it to her.

"Spike, thank you, what's…is this beer?"

He scratches his head. "Can't drink the water here, love, we have to add alcohol to make it safe."

She doesn't look convinced. "Coffee? Orange juice?"

"Don't you know anything about this world? Come, step outside."

To his surprise she doesn’t even cover herself but follows him readily. She has changed. Even when they were fucking like crazed weasels she used to cover herself all the time, as if he wasn’t allowed to look at the ass cheeks he'd just been plunging into. She's shaken that off, apparently.

She stands outside in the brilliant early morning sunshine and looks around at the sea shore below him, and the miles and miles of bleached rubble land inwards.

"What are those? Mayan ruins?"

"Buffy, sweetheart, this is LA. What's left of it."

Her mouth forms an 'O' of surprise. "Gee," she remarks inanely, "I never saw the aftermath of an apocalypse before. Wow. Impressive. I can see it would be hard to get to a mall."

He feels the beginning of a large amount of irritation. Can she really be this dense?

"No malls left, Buffy. As far as we know. The world has changed. No electricity, no computers, no cars. I fish for a living, brew my own booze, and barter for everything else."

"Oh. It must be really hard to make a living around here. So, beer is what I'm gonna get for breakfast?"

"I could cook you some fish?"

She looks at him as if he's insane. "From the sea? Is that safe?"

"Well, darling, where did you think fish fingers came from? Of course it's safe. Probably safer than in your world, no pollution here."

He relights the fire in the old barbie. She watches while he guts the fish and scrapes off the worst scales. He's more meticulous than he usually is, because he's betting that when the fish are done she'll be hungry enough to eat some. The heat beats down on their heads relentlessly and Buffy retreats inside to dress. She returns in different clothes than the night before, complete with big sunhat and glasses. She's packed for a stay, then. After breakfast he'll try to finagle out what she's up to. He folds the fish in his carefully kept and reused bits of aluminum foil and shoves them under a heap of ashes.

She sits down next to him on his rickety bench and he feels her look him over.

"You’re so tan," she says softly.

"Yeah, well, human, no sunscreen to be had – even my English Rose complexion gave up the struggle."

She giggles politely.

Her fingers thread into his unruly thatch of curls. "A little bit of gray in there!" she teases him gently.

"I'm probably about forty, love. Aging is part of the human package."

"I'm thirty three," she confides.

"You look grand, Buffy, not a bit changed."

"Thanks."

She tosses her hair and throws him a look from under her lashes. She needn't bother; he's hers to do with whatever she wants, for as long as she wants. She's like a gift from heaven, and for a second or two he wonders if he's dead. He wouldn't mind that a bit, if he could have Buffy in the hereafter.

She seems to run out of small talk and sits uneasily while he falls into his accustomed silence, mindlessly waiting until the fish are done. This life has taught him more patience than he ever had before. There's not much to do but be patient until the next cask of hooch is broached and fun is had between the cracked and weary survivors.

Buffy fidgets with her rings, her top, her hair. Checks out her breasts, her pearly toes and her hair again. She's not wearing a bra, and he's getting hypnotized by the way her nipples stare at him. She crosses her legs, and the sliding of her silky thighs might almost make him forget his fish, but food is too important for that.

He unpacks the hot foil with his callused fingertips and offers Buffy one. She sniffs gingerly, but gamely tries a little bite. The flaky white flesh has a very mild taste, because it’s so fresh, but of course he has no herbs, and only a bit of sea salt crystals. She eats. He devours the other two hungrily and drinks his ale. It's almost past drinking, and he needs to toss the rest of the brew in the barrel for his moonshine.

Buffy grimaces, but the heat and the dry air make her drink anyway. And there she goes again. She climbs onto his lap and starts seducing him. Blimey if he can see why. Weathered old thing that he is, a dry husk of the man he was for a few brief months, and certainly bearing no resemblance to the vampire she knew.

"Buffy, stop. Why are you here?"

She sighs and presses her delectable flesh against him, and of course he's not immune to it, but he really wants an answer.

"In my world there is a Spike, and he's a vampire."

No surprise there.

"I want a baby, and of course he can't give me one."

Which means she and that Spike are together. The lucky bastard. In what's left of his brain and his emotions he feels something like envy. Most of all that's been broiled and starved out of him; he's resigned to not having anything. Wouldn’t know what to do with this Buffy if she came here to stay. This world is not worth a yielding pampered armful like her, and nor is he.

She's silent, as if she's already explained and belatedly he replays what’s she been saying in his head. Oh. A baby. She's so ready to fuck because she wants a baby. His baby, because he's human and has viable seed. Cackling laughter breaks from his throat and segues into a coughing fit. It can't be from smoking because he hasn't seen a fag in donkey's years.

Buffy looks affronted. "Why are you laughing?"

"Because it would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Isn't your world full of fertile men? Have sperm donors gone out of fashion?" He's kind of proud he can even remember such a thing as sperm donors.

Buffy frowns, and now he can see she isn’t twenty anymore. "I wanted it to be Spike's baby. To look like him, and really be his."

"And is your Spike okay with that? What’s he say?"

Buffy tosses her hair and he can see there's gonna be more skirting around the truth. Strange, that he can see her so clearly and yet still feel that same hopeless yearning he did before. Maybe it’s the daylight that makes her so transparent.

"He understands I want a baby, and he's good with me finding a guy to give me one."

He hasn't lost it yet, by golly. "But he doesn't know you’re visiting me, does he? Can't imagine me or any Spike settling for that. I'd be the last person he'd want to be the father of the baby,"

Buffy pouts and swivels on his lap, and he's helpless to prevent exactly the reaction she wants. His dick still does his deciding for him, and his noggin can think all it will but it always knuckles under.

"I'm the one who’s gonna be pregnant, so I should decide who’s gonna be the father."

"Maybe," he says, and he isn’t quite sure how her breasts have ended up in his hands, "But if it were me I'd postulate some exceptions. Like Harris."

Buffy smiles a genuine smile. "That's what he said."

He's touched by her obvious love for his alter ego. A point in her favor.

Her hands wander over his chest. She hasn't had to unbutton his shirt for that, because it doesn't have those anymore. Her nails rake over his nipples and he's prepared to give her triplets if that's what she wants. He tries to get up with her on his lap but is shamefully unable to make it. For a moment he'd forgotten he doesn't have a vampire’s body anymore, and the strength his body should have had at this age is smoke and ash. She's come to him in time; he doesn't think he'd have been if she’d waited until next year. It's all breaking down, not only civilization, but also his little community here and his body. All gone.

For now, there is her collection of incredibly textures, the soft nappy curls at the apex of her thighs, the sun-kissed silk of her skin, her yielding flesh and hungry mouth. Her nipples demand attention and her pussy sucks him in and spits him out after he's done. He almost wishes to be a vampire again, so he could do this all day long and not get tired, but those days are no more. He pleasures her with his tongue, his rheumy left hand and again with his cock after it’s had a rest. She mewls and sighs and screams, which is sweet of her, but it's clearly more important to lie still with her legs in the air, after he's spilled his seed in her, than to pillow his head on her breast.

She's not really interested in him, that's obvious, just in his dick and what the daft thing spews when it's petted.

*

The days follow one another with alarming speed and they fizz with an almost hysterical kind of happiness. Spike's so bent on enjoying every minute she's there that time slips through his fingers. The more he tries to get it to slow down he faster it races by.

He’s never though of Buffy as the domestic type, but she chips in cheerfully with the endless chores, salvaging wood from the ruins, washing his disreputable clothes and sheets with her shampoo. He lets her cook only once. That’s obviously not her talent.

At first she doesn’t want to talk about her life, probably figuring he’d find it too painful a contrast to his shrunken horizons. When he makes it clear how much value a good story has in a world without TV or books she prattles on happily about the adventures she and the other Spike have been having all over the world.

He takes her fishing one day, and although she's worse than useless at the sail, her rowing is awesome and occasionally useful. That the other fishermen come up to his shack that night to demand a part of the action, he might have predicted. Buffy's fists speak their own language, and the men's smashed noses and aching balls understand her perfectly.

Sick and tired of the unchanging fish courses for breakfast, lunch and dinner she goes out and hunts rabbits for him. His bad eyesight and coughing fits disqualify him for the hunt, so barbecued rabbit makes a nice change, even if the meat’s kind of extra chewy.

Spike doesn’t tell her that having this many aches and pains isn't normal for a forty year old guy. He's afraid he's sick, but he doesn’t know with what. Could be magic, could be the diet, or maybe something genetic. He can’t remember what his father died of, but he knows he was only a toddler. He's ashamed of not talking about this, but he doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize is days in paradise. He knows they’re numbered. How long would it take to make a woman pregnant? Once could be enough, he seems to recall. He hopes it takes a really long time. He could get used to smooth warm flesh against his sore back in the morning, to a well-exercised cock, to companionable small talk and a warm little hand on his shoulder.

Buffy kneads his aching, battered body with sweet smelling oils, cuts his hair with her nail scissors and tames it with her conditioner. She didn’t bring Miss Clairol.

She caresses his cheek and looks at him with such compassionate sweetness in her gaze that it makes him want to curl up and die, because every such glance is a leave-taking all by itself. She’s going to go away from him, and he doesn’t think he can bear life without her anymore. He doesn’t think he can let her go, but he can hardly ask her to stay, can he? Not here. And he can’t ask her to take him with her, because he doesn’t want to hear her answer. Better to dream than to know.

The thought of her departure makes him churn with forgotten emotions, want, take, now. He tumbles her down on the bed without warning and plunges into her angrily, possessively. She seems to like it. That's what she's used to from the vampire, he bets. He can't access the memories from that life in all their bloody glory, which is a blessing, probably, but the jerky sepia-tinted movies he does see in his mind are bad enough.

*

When he comes back from the day's fishing, the requested calamari in his bucket, happily expecting her reaction to this treat, she's gone. There's a folded piece of paper on the table, and a selection of stuff from her bag. With a ragged shout of despair he swipes the massage oil and shampoo off the table. She's gone. How could she do this to him? Just leave without warning, and leave those terrible gifts behind? Alms, is what they are. From her abundance to his poverty. There's even a Mars-bar in there somewhere. The pang of hunger that he feels when he sees the stupid piece of chocolate, the saliva that explodes sweetly into his mouth, shame him into bitter sobs.

He's a fool. Of course she would leave like this, she must have known he wouldn’t have let her go so easily. He's known all along she came to get that one thing, and that she's left must means she succeeded, he managed to knock her up. His one proud deed as a human being, hurrah. He sinks down on the bed that still smells of their mingled scents and lovemaking. He sees it all with terrible clarity now. How she must have hated the sad bed, the rough chair, the constant fish and beer. She must have gritted her teeth and gone on with it because the goal was so important to her, otherwise she would have been out of here in two seconds.

His life is so dreary that even this false companionship, the masked kindnesses have stirred the embers of love in his heart, making it flame up again in a bonfire big enough to consume him whole, body and soul. There's nothing left now. He can't go on. There was always some kind of vague unspecified hope that things would get better, but Buffy's visit only made it painfully clear that there is nothing in his future, only a slow death by illness and starvation. She didn't even bother to lie to him. She didn't actually deceive him, she just gave him what he'd been craving since he met her, the sunbeam of her attention, her body. Her love and her soul are reserved for another. That this other man is him in a different incarnation should make it better, should be a small solace, but it isn't. That Spike has what should have been his; his triumphant reward after turning human, his hero's portion.

The same goes for the child of his body. Should he let the vampire enjoy a life he hasn't earned as much as he has, a loving wife, a baby? He's the fertile one, his seed has filled her womb. He hasn't really thought of the fruit of all this sweet coupling before, because the act itself and the presence of Buffy filled his mind to overflowing. Now he wishes he could hold that child, his child, with a sudden agonized longing that makes every second that he isn't near them both unbearable. He'd like to leave behind something more than the memory of having been a Champion and a collection of bones.

He eats his lonely meal, because even if his mind has given up his body hasn't and demands food. He stares at the empty ocean and a terrible determination rises in him. By rights, Buffy belongs to him, not to the other Spike, who chose to be Lover rather than Champion. He may be getting old, he could even be dying, but he's not played out yet.

Chapter 1

The first thing Buffy does when she gets back from her stay with Willow is raid the fridge. That’s what she calls it, her stay with Willow, even in her own mind. She wanted to go and wake Spike up but the fridge caught her eye and she couldn’t say no to the insistent cravings. She needs to reacquaint herself with all the tastes she’s missed: sweet, sharp, sour, even plain clean water. Fruit, ice cream, bread, anything. Of course, maybe being pregnant has something to do with it, too.

She sits down at the big kitchen table, glad to be home after the long hot trip, and gorges on her finds. Her hands trace the polished wood of the table, she kicks out her shoes and lets her bare feet roam over the smooth tiles of the kitchen floor. Everything’s still here, unchanged, exactly like she left it. Very comforting. It’s silly to expect some shadow from that blighted world to have traveled home with her.

The only thing she needs to make this picture perfect is Spike. She wishes she could tell him everything that happened. He’s her best friend after all, they share all their adventures, their whole lives, but she knows that what she did is not something she can let him know about. It would only hurt him, when she’s done this to make them both happy. Their child will be like Spike and look like him, there won’t be any sperm donors tracking down their children, or the other way around, she isn’t quite clear on that.

She has a big juicy pear in one hand and a chunk of cacciatore in the other, taking alternating bites, when Spike comes in and embraces her from behind. She lets her head fall back against his solid familiar body.

“God, Spike, I’m so glad to be back…”

He nuzzles her neck and cups her breasts, giving them an exploratory squeeze. Would he notice that they’re bigger? She doesn't really know if they are, they just feel swollen and supersensitive, like giant melon breasts, although the mirror and her bras deny this feeling. She leans back into him, excited and gratified to feel his hardness against her back.

“That glad to be back? London was hell? Willow and Tara starved you?” Spike says, teasing her, seeking her nipple.

She turns around and gets on her knees on the chair to kiss him, food still filling her hands.

“None of the above, just really happy to see you. And Tara was away, remember, or I would have gained twenty pounds from her cooking.”

Spike glows at her, his pale ivory skin and light hair clearly visible even in the cool darkness of the kitchen. His hair is platinum again, his eyes seem dark blue and he’s wearing an unbuttoned white shirt with rolled-up sleeves over blue jeans. How beautiful he looks, how perfect and healthy and just right. She puts the food on the table without looking behind her. She can’t wait to touch him, opens his shirt and roams her hand over his taut belly. She loves the feel of his skin, slightly cooler than hers, and soft, so soft and smooth. As skin should be. Not that she's comparing, of course.

“Spike, you look good enough to eat…”

“Before or after you finish the pear and the salami?”

Spike gestures at the remains of the other things she's been guzzling, a piece of cheese, chocolate, half a liter of milk.

“In between?” Buffy says. “And you could eat me too?”

Spike crushes her body against his and possessively sniffs the crease of skin behind her ear. He licks and bites her neck softly, and then comes back up to look at her speculatively. “Can it be, love, that there is another reason for this attack of the munchies?”

Buffy lifts her shirt and sticks out her stomach, “Can't you tell?”

His hand hovers over her belly, not touching it yet as if he doesn't dare. “Really? Are you…really?”

“It doesn't take that much, Spike,' Buffy says airily.

Spike grips her lightly about her waist. His thumbs press on the sensitive skin below her hipbones, stroking lightly. His touch makes her dizzy with longing. He’s so different from a human man, not only to the eye but in everything. His sheer presence makes her tingle, a combination of scent and sound and tactile information. Her hands glide up his arms, such good arms to have, solid and smooth, muscled but not bulky. He’s lean, but his flesh covers just enough of his bones that they never protrude. His elbows are dimpled. She loves him.

“Come, baby,” Buffy says longingly as he keeps staring at her flat belly without speaking. “Let’s go to bed and you can stare at Spike Junior from up close.”

She gets up from her chair and tugs Spike along by the hand.

“Spike Junior,” he says dazedly. “You already know it’s a boy?”

“No, silly. Way too early for that. It was just a figure of speech. Now come here and let me take off those jeans.”

They make it to the bed, as they do nowadays. Buffy moans as her back hits the softness of the mattress. The cool smooth sheets are heaven. She’s gonna stay in bed for a week.

The moment her head hits the pillow Buffy catches sight of something green on her balcony. “Sweetie, did you water my plants? Did they survive?”

Spike lifts an eyelid. “Huh? Yeah, sure, watered them daily. I promised, didn’t I?”

“You’re my hero.”

Buffy dashes outside to check out her basil, dill and coriander plants. Who’d have thought she’d ever be the kind of person plants could survive? She crushes a basil leaf between her finger to inhale the rich fresh smell, then rakes through the lavender, the rosemary and the thyme. All the plants look good, except that the basil has little brown spots on its leaves. It's probably nothing.

“I’m just happy to see everything is still here and still the same. That is so comforting.”

She climbs back into bed and puts a sprig of lavender between the pillows.

Spike buries his head between her thighs. “You smell like lamb chops, love. All you need is a honey-balsamic dressing and a good roasting. Ah, here comes the honey already…”

“Gross, Spike.”

“I can’t believe you still find it gross after having spent ten years with me. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

Spike pushes her knees up and slides inside her. Buffy closes her eyes. This is heaven. She’s gonna be super lazy tonight and let him do all the work. She wants to be ridden hard and long, and not be the rider for a change. The past month has seem some hard work on her part.

The languid rhythm Spike initiates makes her flash back to another Spike in another place. Will he be okay all alone in his pathetic shack, eating nauseatingly bland fish? But there's no point in thinking that, she's not responsible for the fate of all the Spikes in all the worlds, just this one. She opens her eyes. She blinks furiously so she can see her own gorgeous honey, and not be reminded of someone looking and feeling and smelling different.

That's better. Spike's eyes have lost the momentary surprise and uncertainty they had with the news of he pregnancy and are now focused and glittering, concentrating on what he does best, making her happy. He was totally cooperative when she'd started talking about wanting a baby, although he was a little despondent at not being able to provide one. He said he was okay with adoption, or AI, gay friends of Willow’s, whatever other options she could think of.

She stretches out her arms and grips the bars of their curly iron bed, handcrafted by Italian smiths, guaranteed to withstand the most vigorous assault. It’s held out so far. Here comes her first orgasm, a nice one to warm her up and to create more of what Spike calls honey, which is one of his less offensive words. She hasn’t dared check out his Italian with her girlfriends or the Italian Slayers. She’s fairly sure they are of unparalleled obscenity.

While Spike has gone down to fetch her a drink, Buffy leans out over the balcony and looks down on the city below. Night is falling, and lights are pinking on all over town. The Ponte Vecchio is as garishly lit as always, and she breathes in the soft, moist air, courtesy of the river. They've lived here for two years now, and she wouldn’t mind staying in Italy for ever. The climate, the food, so much better than London or Syria, and let's not even mention Cleveland. Or, like, post-apocalypse LA.

“Let’s go out for dinner tonight, Spike,” Buffy says. “I feel like sitting outside and watching the people go past, and walking back up through the gardens.”

Spike hands her a glass of wine.

“Spike! I can’t drink anymore! What were you thinking?”

Spike looks confused.

“Pregnant women shouldn’t drink,” Buffy explains. “Everybody knows that.”

“Well, gee, Buffy, I wonder how could I have missed out on learning that in my whole long life,” Spike says sarcastically.

Spike can be so prickly about stuff like that. It’s not as if she knows what nineteenth century people know or didn’t know. There’s no blame, but he always takes that kind of thing as a slight.

“Never mind. I got books on pregnancy and motherhood in London, so you can polish up your knowledge and be prepared.”

“Hmmm.”

Spike doesn’t sound too enthusiastic.

“You need them, Spike. You’ve told me so many horror stories on how you were raised!”

“Horror stories? What horror stories? I had a very happy childhood!” Spike protests.

“Yeah, right, you were palmed off on a nurse, who fed you nothing but blancmange, mashed potatoes and gravy. Washing once a week? No heating in your room?”

Spike chuckles in his wine. “Customs of the day, love. Not horrible at all.”

“Well, it’s a miracle you’re not a walking marshmallow man with all that starch,” Buffy says. No way is her kid going to be fed any of that stuff.

“Good genes, love,” Spike says and pats his taut abdomen with satisfaction.

Buffy opens her mouth to say how happy she is that her kid will have the same genes but she shuts it just in time. That was nearly an oops.

She glides her knuckles over Spike’s cheek. “You are okay with the baby, aren’t you? You haven’t changed your mind? It’s early, we could still …”

“No!” Spike says vehemently and nearly crushes her hand with the pressure of his. “I want you to have a child, have that opportunity like any other woman. It wouldn’t be fair if you had to miss out on that because I’m a vampire. I said whatever you decided, whomever you decided. Except, you know.”

Xander and Angel. Yeah, Buffy knows. She wouldn’t have picked them herself, because they look nothing like her or Spike. She could have asked him if he minded a human version of himself, but she hasn’t. She kinda thinks she knows the answer.

Spike puts his ears against her flat tanned belly. His hair tickles.

“It just gurgles,” he says. “No other heartbeat yet.”

Buffy looks at his intent face, his disordered pale hair, and she gets little blurry flashes of imagined futures, she and Spike and a little curly headed child walking hand in hand, birthday cakes with three candles on it, pink ribbons or footballs. Graduation ceremonies. Could life be any more perfect?

*

Spike decides to go north. Not because there’s still magic up there, because he wouldn’t know about it if there was, but for vague reasons like they might still speak English in Oregon and it might still be green up there. He’d like to see some green again before he dies.

South would mean even hotter weather and speaking Spanish. His Spanish is rusty and hasn’t survived the Shanshu, much like his demon languages and his detailed, fresh-as-yesterday’s vampire memories. He sometimes wonders if it’s an intended blessing about the memories. Nobody bothered to inform him about the details of the Shanshu before he got it. Maybe nobody knew, not even Wesley or Angel themselves. They

wouldn’t have had time to tell him about it in either case, when they were fighting their last fight in that alley. It’ll be weird being in a place where it hasn’t stopped raining in honor of their memories.

East is desert. He can’t remember exactly how much, but he wouldn’t be able to cross it before he died of thirst, he's pretty sure.

West is water. Japan, if he and his boat got that far. He doesn’t think Japan fared any better than his neck of the rubble, but wouldn’t it be nice to arrive in Tokyo and find that the subways were still rolling and the lights on the Ginza still blinking? He used to rave about sushi and sashimi, back in the days, but ten years of eating fish has lessened the appeal considerably. The other things he used to eat besides these delicacies are mercifully vague.

Spike dries his catches of fish in the sun and tries to talk and barter and service his way to some bread and bottles to carry beer in. He can’t explain the urgency he feels. Of course he’d like to find Buffy sooner rather than later, but he knows his chances are practically nonexistent anyway. He’s going to die trying is all. Having a goal, however unattainable, makes him feel alive. He’s sharper and enjoys the grudging ration of beauty in his life more than ever before. There goes his last sunset, an orgy of reds and purples. There’s his last moonrise, laying down a shimmering path for his soul to walk on. He won’t be back here.

He leaves when the first glimpse of dawn grays the sky and gives the dry air its only brief hint of freshness and moisture all day. He doesn’t look back.

The first leg of the journey is familiar, although he hasn’t been up this way in years. The farthest he got was two days out, and he nearly died on the way back. He’s not going to have take time now to search for wells or plunder or look for other survivors, like the last time. He just wants to make it a good distance each day.

At the end of the first day, he’s still walking among rubble and other ruined cityscape. LA was such a giant sprawling monster of a town. He’ll be happy to get past Malibu tomorrow. The road reminds him of the Little Prince. Instead of an elephant, the snake has swallowed a freight train, and it put up a hell of a fight. Twisted black tarmac rears high above his head, turning in on itself and swallowing its own tail. Cars and trucks lie where they have fallen.

He averts his eyes from the skeletons. Angel and the others died trying to save this world, and strictly speaking so did he. For the, what, fourth time? He should be happy about what he’s accomplished in his long life, falling so deep so long ago, returning from that triumphantly into full forgiveness. All his sins washed from his soul, nothing more than grainy black and white memories that don’t keep him awake at night. Of course, that might also mean part of what made him Spike was washed away with them. Sometimes he suspects he’s not the man he was, even on the inside.

He squares his shoulders, shifts the heavy pack and walks on an hour past his comfort zone. He’s paying for it already with blisters and pains in his knees and hips. He searches out a sheltered spot and makes camp. A grand word for spreading out his blanket and eating cold fish. Making a fire can’t be risked. Even in this magic-poor place, strange beasties crawl and slither about at night, and lately there have been reports of big cats and coyotes returning.

Spike looks up at the sky, waiting for his muscles and spine to unkink so he can sleep. Too bad there are so few stars left. How is that possible? Aren’t stars far away from the Earth? He doesn’t know how the apocalypse destroyed the world, or how it influenced the workings of the universe, but it’s mighty strange all the same. Is Buffy looking up at the sky in Rome right now, or wherever she came from? He pictures her standing in slanted golden light in a blue dress, her face tilted to the heavens, her stomach softly rounded and shielded by her hands.

Yeah, right. Crouching on a bed, more likely, being roughly ridden by the Undead Usurper. He turns over, and then back again because that is even more uncomfortable. If she sees what odds he has braved, what chasms he has crossed to claim her, she’ll welcome him. He’s a former Champion, he can do this. He can dream.

Their child would be a curly headed replica of Buffy, holding out her arms to be lifted up, smiling trustingly, being comforted after a fall. He’d be healed of whatever ails him, they could live together in a cottage, there could be more children. There would be love and affection and gentleness. A life in the sun of a gentler, moister climate, growing old together. These are new dreams to him, he’s never allowed himself to have them before, but now they seem almost within reach, if he can just…surmount a few insurmountable obstacles first.

He can barely stand the next morning, his legs are that stiff and painful, and his back is killing him as usual. He tells himself he’ll limber up from the walking and sets off at once, chewing his unappetizing breakfast on the go. A lonely bird circles over his head a few times before it wings off. He must look like a scuttling crab from up there, all painful jerky movements, bent over under his backpack.

Day three. Now he wishes his pack had been heavier, because the lighter load means he’s almost out of water. It can’t end like this, can it? Champion dies of thirst within a week of setting out on his quest? That wouldn’t be fair. Stories never end that way.

He clambers up a hill of rubble that is slightly higher than the other rubble heaps. The original gray of the concrete is bleached and powdery, as if the essence of concreteness has been leeched out of it. The apocalypse has killed even concrete, he guesses. His efforts don’t actually get him a good view of where he’s going. Or rather, the view’s not bad, it’s just that there’s only more ruined buildings and randomly snaking roads. If he looks to the right there’s a landmark, a great big black crater. He wonders what came down there. Isn’t that more or less in the direction of Sunnydale? He ponders this for a few moments. Sunnydale had a Hellmouth, which meant it was a hotbed for magic and evil creatures. Mightn’t it make more sense if he tried to strike out for his old hunting grounds instead of vague dreams of green cool forests?

Spike turns away. No. Without her, Sunnydale holds nothing for him. He trudges on in his agonizingly slow tempo. When his shadow lengthens, he looks at the sunset again. It looks exactly the same as it did from his shack, which is a bit of a downer. Traveling is really slow when you have to do it on foot.

There’s a weird feeling on the back of his neck, like he’s being watched, but he hasn’t heard or seen a living creature bigger than a lizard all day. He even thought of trying to eat it, but it was too fast for him. There’s not much he can do about the spooky feeling. If there's anything out to get him, there's nowhere to run, even if he could. He is of course the darkest, most colorful thing against all the pale sun-bleached rubble. Vultures and other flying predators could easily find him.

He finds a spot against what’s left of an old wall that might at least guard his back. Jagged blocks of concrete lie around in a half-circle, broken side up, like buildings dropped from a great height, and form a natural arena. He curls up uneasily. There’s no moon yet. He lies there in the unrelieved darkness and listens for anything amiss. Nothing. He can’t sleep, nevertheless, and manages to light a fire with his few emergency sticks of wood. He might be able to use them to drive away the predators.

When they come, it’s from a direction he wasn’t expecting. Three forms drop down silently from atop the wall at his back. He chokes on his own surprised shout and they’re on him so fast he has no time to grab the burning wood or even lift up his arms to protect his neck. The fire throws weird elongated shadows on the ruined building. They look like vampires, scary ugly creatures with bumpy faces, fanged mouths that slaver and lisp at him. They are a lopsided lot, none of the three has all his limbs or features intact, each of them is missing something. Tribal ritual? It’s funny how much detail you can still see when you’re being drained from three points on your body simultaneously. He suddenly remembers how much Angelus hated that, sharing his victims, and that he only did it once when it was the only victim they’d found all week. He hasn’t remembered the old times that clearly in a decade.

The yellow eyes glow at Spike and it’s as if they’re giving off heat, he feels toasty and comfortable all around, like lying in a warm bath of Buffy loving, slack and replete. There’s pain, but it’s far away.

He should act. Stake them. Burn them, but he can't even lift his arms. His quest has failed. He’ll never see Buffy again, or their child. He can’t accept that. There’s one option open, one road he thought he’d never have to take again. He turns his head and bites hard into the salty, leathery skin against his mouth.

*

Buffy is on her knees in hot, earthy smelling soil, weeding around her pumpkin patch. It’s hard to decide which is a weed and which is a pumpkin, not exactly her expertise. One of the yellow fruits starts to grow and grow and she scurries over hastily, pulling weeds, squashing slugs and watering like mad. It’s bigger than her head, now a kangaroo ball, but then it explodes with a great wet splat, leaving her with nothing but seeds and sticky hands. She never knows beforehand if it’s going to be a good one. She wishes she could ask her mother.

The next one starts swelling and history repeats itself. This one gives off a strong sweet odor, and Buffy is filled with hope this will be the one. It stops growing and when she carefully feels all over it to discover the reason, her hands disappear into a soft spot she didn’t see. The pumpkin is all rotted inside, and she gags

when the sweet stench of death hits her nostrils. Her hands are oozing black and purple when she pulls them out and no amount of washing can get them clean.

She’s panicking now. Are none of her pumpkins gonna make it? There, at the far end is a big orange one. Please let this be the right one! It does seem to be doing very well, it’s round and plump and shiny, with not a single slug track or caterpillar hole. She caresses it slowly, sliding her hands over the sun-warmed globe. Her hands touch other hands, big warm brown ones touching the pumpkin just like hers. Her gaze follows the arms the hands are attached to. There’s a threadbare dun-colored shirt over broad shoulders. She can’t see the face. A big straw sunhat is hiding his features from her. She stretches her body over the giant pumpkin to look under it, but the hands push her off and curl protectively around the big fruit.

Now she’s getting angry. It’s her pumpkin, dammit, and nobody’s going to take it from her. She grabs the globe firmly and pulls. The unknown figure pulls back. There’s a tense moment and then Buffy feels some give. She’s going to win! But the pumpkin shatters in a shower of blood orange flesh and pulp, seeds spattering the earth like rain. Her hands and belly are empty, dripping with red fluid.

Buffy’s heart’s thumping wildly and she’s awash with sweat. Great. Another one of these scary birthing dreams. The midwife says they’re perfectly normal. Which is good, because of they were Slayer dreams…The alarm shrills on. Why doesn’t Spike turn it off? It’s on his side of the bed. She wakes more fully and heaves herself over to the other side of the bed with a grunt. Not easy when you're shaped like a whale that just ate a platoon of giant squid.

She rolls to the side of the bed, lets her feet fall to the floor and pushes herself upright. Her mission becomes really urgent and she waddles to the bathroom as fast as she can. That's better. Now she’d like some breakfast. Faint sounds from below indicate that Spike is busy preparing it. She opens the blinds and looks out to the dark gray London morning. It won’t be light for hours yet and it’s cold with a nasty wet bite. She never would have thought she’d say it, but sometimes English weather is a blessing. For example when you’re a pregnant Slayer who’s always too hot. There’s no one out there, although she keeps expecting someone or something. Good.

Spike comes in bearing breakfast on a heavily laden tray.

Buffy plunks herself down in the pillows again and reaches greedily for her freshly pressed orange juice with one hand, croissant with the other.

“Thanks, sweetie. You take such good care of me.”

Spike slides in next to her and fondles her belly proudly. “Tadpole looks hungry. Takes after her Dad, she does.”

“We’re not naming him Tadpole, just so you know, besotted father.”

“Short for Thaddeus?”

“Ew, even if it was your dad. Chimera?”

“Please. Might as well go for Hippogriff or Manticore.”

“As long as you haven’t divulged your last name yet, William, we won’t know if it’s gonna be Wyvern X. Summers, or Unicorn Y. Summers, right?”

“Hey, you Googled! It’s just not a name I want the world to know, Buffy. In the hands of Willow or Andrew it would lead to information about my past, which is none of their business.”

“I could know. It could be our secret?”

Spike kisses her forehead. “Just eat up, sweetheart, you need it.”

“Um, Spike,” she says through a full mouth, "when was that appointment again?”

“8:40, love, so you’d better hurry.”

“Ungodly hour,” she grumbles between a bite of egg and a slice of bacon.

“Only way I can be there, pumpkin,” Spike says.

“Sorry, sweetie, I know.” A feeling swells in her and pops open. “And don’t call me pumpkin! It’s bad enough being this bloated monster, you don’t have to remind me.”

Spike says nothing.

“Okay, sorry. What shall I wear? I have nothing to wear!”

Spike sips his blood in silence.

“Just so you know, this kid is going to be an only child, I don’t like being pregnant.”

“You don’t say, love? And you so blooming and radiant!”

Is he being sarcastic? Well, yeah, of course, she gets the first part of what he said definitely is, but he said she looked like a goddess! A ripe glowing peach! Her lips wobble and Spike hands her a Kleenex without missing a sip. What really gets her is being this predictable, happy, hungry, cranky and teary in the space of five minutes, just like every other pregnant woman she’s ever read about or saw portrayed in a cheesy movie. She’d figured she’d be unique, being the Slayer and all, that she’d have special hormones or something.

“Why didn’t you ask Willow to get you twins if she was helping you with fertility charms anyway?”

“Gah,” Buffy splutters. “Are you out of your mind?”

She looks down on her impressive bulge. “I’d have exploded already!”

Christ, she nearly choked to death when Spike mentioned Willow and enhanced fertility. If he knew what exactly Willow had done for her…Her mind zooms out to desolate shores and she pictures a lonely figure staring out over the darkling sea, waiting for her. For God’s sake, he must have known she was never coming back. He won’t be waiting. She’d better concentrate on getting enough food inside before they have to leave.

Later, when the midwife is asking Spike the questions she’s answered a dozen times already, her attention wanders off again, as it keeps doing these days, and she imagines being the baby. To be all rolled up and wedged tightly within in her womb, hearing her heart beat like a giant drum hanging above her, slowly turning in hazy red-tinged light. What was it thinking? Lemme out, ma, lemme out? Or mmm, cozy, warm, stay here forever? Spike would have been of the last variety, she’s sure. He has an infinite capacity to lounge in bed with her and never gets bored as long as he’s touching her or looking at her.

“Father?”

“Dead.”

“Deceased. At what age?”

“That would be, um, thirty three.”

“Cause of death?”

“Dunno.”

“Mother?”

“Dead.”

“Deceased.” The emphasis is a little more pronounced now. “At what age?”

“Fifty-four.”

“Cause of death?”

“Um, consumption.”

Buffy gives Spike’s hand a quick squeeze.

“Siblings?”

“None.”

“Are there any diseases in your family? Did your mother experience difficulties birthing you? Caesarian?”

“Er, dunno. Natural childbirth as far as I know. And, er, consumption?”

“Yeah,” Buffy chimes in, ”coz I’ve been thinking about that big head of his, you know. Will the baby have a bigger head than average too, and will it make the birth harder?”

The midwife smiles a professional, reassuring laugh. “Don’t worry, dear. His mother managed just fine with him. Now about consumption, I assume you mean tuberculosis? That’s not hereditary, but if you’ve been exposed to it, it might be wise to get tested.”

Buffy looks at Spike to help him get away from this line of questioning and runs straight into the hot suspicion and awakening anger in his eyes. She swallows, willing down the hot tide of guilt that floods her throat. What did she say to make him angry? But there’s no denying, even to herself, that she knows he’s getting a clue, somehow.

They round off the anamnesis, and Buffy’s stomach is measured, she’s weighed, they take a blood sample for her iron, although the midwife has exclaimed three times over her Hb levels already. Urine sample she brought from home. Blood pressure. All through these procedures, she feels Spike’s gaze resting on her like a yoke, bowing her shoulders, hunching in expectation of the outburst that is to come. He stands there, his arms folded and his teeth clenched, smoldering at her and keeping his anger tightly fisted, ready to break out when they are alone. He can’t know. He can’t be sure. He’s just suspicious. She can still talk him out of it. And maybe he won’t mind at all.

This is one of these moments where reasoning doesn’t help at all and she has to suffer his silence all through the cab ride home. She loves London cabs and she rather likes London, but she can’t help feeling that if they were in Florence this would all be less awful. The climate itself would calm him down; make him feel mild and warm and forgiving instead of cold, tight, and suspicious.

Buffy pays off the cab driver while Spike dashes inside under his giant umbrella. She waddles up the granite steps and pushes the door open. The stairs, taken slowly. She takes her time about taking off her wool coat and scarf, goes to the toilet. She wishes she could put this off, or roll back time. When she walks into the kitchen, Spike is sitting at the table with his head in his hands. Her big belly turns hard in a Braxton-Hicks contraction and she has to stand still and pant for a few minutes until the muscles relax. Stress or slaying will do that to her every time. She’s stopped the slaying, reluctantly, but this is something she brought upon herself.

Slowly she lowers herself down in the high backed chair next to Spike. He looks up and again she’s shocked to see his face. She hasn’t seen him this angry in years. Every tendon in his neck stands taut and he glowers at her from under his brows.

“Please explain, Buffy,” he says curtly.

The civility hurts more than a slap in the face. There’s still a chance he’s mad at something else, isn’t there, so she prevaricates.

“What do you mean, honey?”

“You’re worried about the size of my noggin? You know what I think? You said you went to Willow that month to help you choose a donor, and enhance your fertility with spells. Well, we all know what Willow did to get Tara. I think you went to another dimension, where there was another Spike, who somehow got you pregnant. Well?”

Buffy can only stare at him and blink rapidly. Spike hates it when she cries to win an argument.

He slams his hand down on the kitchen table, and Buffy sees the sturdy oak crack. “Why did you have to do that? Couldn’t you have asked me first? I would have let Willow do that mojo on me!”

He’s almost right. Should she keep this last bit of truth to herself? Not anymore, that would only make things worse now. She might as well fess up.

“Willow tracked down a human Spike for me,” she says, and hardly recognizes her own strangled voice.

Spike stares. “What? Human? What do you mean? My former self? Did you go back in time?”

Now it’s Buffy’s turn to gape. “Well, that’s an idea. But no, there is a timeline where you were turned into a human being as a reward for being a Champion. Like Angel.”

All the anger runs out of Spike. All that remains in his face is a bleakness that tears into Buffy with great big talons.

“I never made that choice. I didn’t even seriously consider the bloody Shanshu. That was just …I needed to focus on something if it wasn’t on you. Angel was always bloody welcome to it. Didn’t tell him, of course.” He leans back in the chair and he presses his fingers in his eye sockets. “Buffy. Don’t you remember how much I hated it that you slept with the unsouled Spike? You must have known I’d hate it if you were going to sleep with a human version of me. I’d rather you slept with Angel!”

“I didn’t want brown eyes,“ Buffy wants to say but doesn't. “I thought – I thought it would make you happy if the baby looked like you. I though it would make things easier, later on. I wanted you to be as much the real dad as possible. So you’d care.”

“I care. I would have cared whatever the kid looked like, because it’s yours. You know that.”

“I know now. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Spike says and gets up. “You did this deliberately. You had to get your own way. You knew this was the last thing I wanted, don’t bother denying it. The guilt’s coming off you in waves.”

He stands there for a few moments, looking around the kitchen, looking at her stomach. What’s he going to do? He stalks out and she hears the front door slam. She tries to shoot upright and catch him but is too slow to even see him exit.

“Spike!” Buffy screams in the still winter morning.. “You can’t leave me alone, I'm pregnant!”

She doesn’t see him. Where did he go? It’s daylight. She shuts the door and walks back to the kitchen. The baby kicks and she plays with it automatically, pushing back at the little foot or knee or whatever. Spike will be back. They love each other. There’s never been anything they haven't gotten through together. Well, there was, but that was a long time ago. How bad can this be?

The coffee machine beeps. The smell of coffee makes her nauseous these days.

Chapter 2

Dawn lets the phone ring for another thirteen times and then she gives up. This is so thoughtless of Buffy! She's gone to great trouble arranging this job and flat exchange thing so she can be near Buffy when she's having the baby, and now she hasn’t been able to reach her for two weeks. Typical. Or it would be if she wasn’t pregnant. She'd hardly be gallivanting off to kill some exotic baddie now, would she? No plane will carry her, even if she was only accompanying Spike, who won’t answer his cell either.

She sighs and decides to start unpacking and arranging a fun evening for herself. Look up some old Council friends. Or Andrew.

When she slides home into the leatherette booth of the trendy restaurant, a fifties diner American style, she’s satisfied to note that she's still got it. Male eyes swivel around to follow her progress.

"Hey, Dawnie," Willow says.

Willow hasn’t changed into clubbing togs; she's still power-suited from top to toe, with a severe hairstyle and dark glasses. They touch face.

"Willow. Impressive get-up…"

Willow makes a deprecating face. "You know how it is, Dawnie, wearing a good suit is half the work of getting your will done."

"Not in academia," Dawn says. "The opposite, in fact."

Willow sighs. “I can let my hair down with you, anyway, hon." She unpins her bun and shakes out her hair. It’s long and still bright red. "The glasses are fake. I just need them to deal with the rest of the Council. I don’t know why the First thought it was destroying the Council by bombing just the one building. You won’t believe the amount of old fogies that came out of the woodwork when they figured the coast was clear again."

"Poor Willow. All that power…" Dawn says teasingly.

"All those long boring meetings, you mean," Willow says. ”Believe me, being Head of Council is very hard work. But let’s not talk about that. How's Buffy? Haven’t seen her for a few weeks. She was getting pretty big, and really beaming the one moment, grumbling the next. Spike’s so cute with the fatherly concern."

"Well, the funny thing is, I got here, all raring to be supportive sister and all, and I haven’t been able to raise Buffy all last week, or Spike, for that matter."

Willow frowns. "I'm sure Buffy is alright, or we would know."

She looks seriously at Dawn, who feels that thing in her gut she gets when it’s about Spike. "What? Something with Spike?"

Willow tosses her hair and plays with her drink far too long.

"Come on Willow, don’t keep me on tenterhooks like that."

"There have been odd…sightings of Spike from our informant. I haven’t been able to confirm them yet through more trustworthy channels."

“What sightings?"

Willow looks straight at Dawn again and her eyes are dark and serious. "They say he’s killing again. We’ve found sloppy vampire kills in the dock areas, more than usual. The Chalmers group tries to tag new vamps, so the Slayers can keep track of the population, and these are by an unknown."

Willow’s face grows fuzzy for a moment until Dawn blinks. She can’t be hearing this right. Spike would never, ever start killing again. “I don’t believe it,” she says abruptly. "Not Spike."

"Maybe the happiness of impending father-hood made him lose his soul?"

Ha ha. Too lame for words.

"Sorry," Willow says off her look. "Didn’t mean it like it sounded. I know Spike’s soul doesn’t have a curse attached. And even if he lost it I doubt he’d kill that randomly or sloppily, he's smarter than that. But look."

She slides a picture over to Dawn. Dawn’s hands are icy cold and shaking. She doesn't want to know this, not about Spike. She wants to trust him.

The photo was clearly taken in darkness. A blurry figure stands beneath a streetlight and looks around at the camera. The posture is shifty and it appears he’s about to run away. It resembles Spike, Dawn has to admit, even at that bad a quality. The white hair is clearly visible and the body’s dimensions are Spike’s. He’s not wearing the duster, though.

"This doesn’t mean anything, Willow," Dawn says. Her voice is satisfyingly steady. "This could be Spike, true, but this doesn’t prove he’s killing."

“I know," Willow says. “But I have to have this checked, you understand that, don't you? There are a lot of factions in the Council who believe that employing a vampire is utter folly and madness and wouldn’t mind seeing him ruined or killed."

“I’ll stop by their place tomorrow," Dawn says. “If Buffy finds out about this she’ll kick up a hell of a fuss."

Willow raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. "Dawn. Buffy’s name is not synonymous with power in the Council. She’s just one of the slayers now. Granted, the oldest, together with Faith, and a valued employee. But no more than that." Her voice is soft and measured.

Dawn clenches her teeth to keep the anger out of her voice. "So all they did for the Council, all those times she saved the world together with Spike count for nothing? A valued employee? If you could hear yourself, Willow! The oh so regretful tone of your voice…How about friendship? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?"

"Come off your high horse, Dawn. It's not as if I’m sending out killing squads! I just want to hear from him, see with my own eyes that he's his normal self." Willow gulps down her Pimms.

Dawn's happy to see that she’s still a little bit sensitive to emotional blackmail like this. Willow likes to pretend she’s still the sweet hesitant girl of ten years ago, which Dawn thinks is silly and self-indulgent. Anyway, better to be the power-hungry Head of Council than to be like poor Xander, a contractor struggling with alcohol, finances and two ex-wives. Having long acquaintance with Buffy doesn’t seem to be make for a happy life, somehow.

"You know what, Dawn? You don’t have a full time job for the next couple of months, do you?"

"No, I found work for a few days a week while I’m on leave. I need the extra time to help Buffy out."

“I understand, but that means I could hire you to track Spike down. How about that? You could make sure he’s treated fairly and all."

That’s not a bad idea, actually. Clever Willow. Dawn herself is in good standing with the Council because of her work on demonic languages. Nobody knows that Spike's a regular contributor to that. The man speaks dozens of languages, from Attic Greek to modern Italian, from Fyarl to Yeti, which has been an invaluable asset in her work.

Dawn thinks about it for one more second and then nods in acceptance. "Usual consultancy rates? Done. Really, the idea that Spike would start killing is ridiculous. Buffy would never stand for it."

"I agree," Willow says hastily. "Let’s clear his name, okay? I’m gonna be out of town next week, so I’ll arrange things for you with Smythe."

"Okay. Hey, Willow, I gotta go. I’m meeting Andrew. Say hi to Tara for me."

Willow’s face brightens. “Thanks. I will. She’d really like it if you visited her, you know.”

Dawn forces a smile on her face and nods. “Sure. I will. When the whole baby thing has settled down, okay?”

Dawn’s never been easy with Tara again. If you look at it impartially, this is not her Tara. They’d never met this woman before Willow brought her from another dimension. Dawn can never bring herself to see them as identical, as Willow obviously does. Tara never seems quite as warm and motherly as she did before she, well, died. She’s even been known not to recognize Dawn straight off when she visits. There’s always a vagueness about her that puts Dawn off.

"Count on it. Bye!"

Dawn tries to shake off unformed feelings of foreboding. Ridiculous. Spike would never…She wishes Willow hadn’t changed so much. She can try all she wants to be Buffy’s old friend, but she spends too much time in the powerful director’s persona to be that anymore. Especially since Giles and Andrew resigned from the Council to form their own supernatural detective agency, there isn’t really anyone to challenge her. Spike and Buffy would do well to remain on friendly terms with her, although she hates the calculation in that thought.

*

He doesn't remember how he got here. It's dark and rainy here and it smells fishy sometimes, but not like home. Or maybe it does, an older home than the brightly lit picture that’s foremost in his mind. The searing blue sky, the dry heat and the golden perfumed presence he can’t visualize but only remembers as a sweet caress on his skin, that’s the place he calls home, the place which gives him comfort. Only sometimes, he almost remembers walking these streets before, and it evokes dreaded memories; pain, humiliation and the dark woman, and also gory joy and the thrill of the chase.

He doesn't know that thrill anymore. His hands and eyes don't work so well, and he's lucky if he can catch one of the smelly furry ones, usually a wounded or sick one. They come to him if he asks hard enough. Sometimes he gnaws at his own fingers, he's that hungry. He longs with all his heart for that place where everything was better, and he searches for it every night. He wishes he could recall more clearly what his golden goddess looked like, or her name. His name is Ike, he knows that. It tears through his brain on a long ragged scream, don't... please, please Ike, please don't do this, please don't do this...

Because of that, he knows he's bad. He's evil, which is good, but he came back wrong. There is something that belongs to him, and if he has it back, everything will be right. It was taken from him by another. He can almost put his finger on the identity of that other, but he's sure he'll know him when he sees him. The betrayer, he calls him in his mind. The evil sorcerer who witched her away. She'll make everything better, he knows it.

He often stands in the deep shade of a doorway, where the modest lighting of the bigger thoroughfares doesn't penetrate, and stares at those who walk there. They smell so good, almost like his lost treasure, but he daren't step up to them, because he's weak and afraid. He listens to their words. Sometimes he hears one he knows and then he can play with it in his mind, turn it over and taste it on his tongue. He used to know words once. Bright, shiny words to lay at the feet of his beloved. Of course, she was grateful for his gifts and allowed him what he desired most, to drink from her slender neck. It's the only boon he can imagine.

Then, one night, he gets lucky. Two glittering creatures hung with stars and other shiny baubles, trailing a special kind of scent that means something to him. They talk softly amongst themselves and utter a word he thought was lost.

Amidst a string of incomprehensible syllables, the word "Buffy" drops into his mind like a stone. The waters of his brain aren't still anymore. Ever widening circles spread out from that one word and softly lap at the edges of his brain, uncovering and washing clean new old memories.

He's in London. Buffy is his treasure and she is here, too. He tries to follow the girls but he has to admit defeat when they enter an underground entrance. Too busy, too brightly lit, with trains storming at him from all directions when he tries to catch one of the black mice. He's gotten lost in the deep tunnels before, and it took a long time to get back out. He doesn't like to be away from the river for too long. He's found fish there, that he doesn't seem to like eating anymore, but the smell gives him comfort. His eyes fall on a sign near the underground entrance and he realizes it means something. It says "Charlotte Street". He remembers reading and again, more words well up in his brain. He's healing. The big black ones hurt him before they spit him out here. It's a good thing. Charlotte must live here, and although she too must be a girl, he doesn't want her. He needs to find Buffy Street.

He closes his eyes. It's then that he remembers her scent and touch best, those good moments when they were strong all around him, when she was gently rocking on his hips and making him feel like the happiest man in the world. The memory is disturbingly pale. It lacks something. It lacks blood.

If only he had blood, he would be stronger. He needs to be strong to find her, because he doesn't think she will find him. All the new words he remembers give him new ideas. There comes one he lusts for, a young plump one, fearful and lonely. He’s not afraid of her. He steps out of his hiding place and wills hard at her, trying to catch her eyes, so his hand can grab her before she runs away screaming. He hasn’t counted on what happens. The fluttering scared gaze looks up at him and snags on something in his eyes. Her face relaxes and with a longing smile she tumbles into his arms.

“Yes,” she sighs and offers him her soft throat.

He doesn’t remember taking a decision, but his fangs descend and he drinks until he can no longer. He lies on his back in the filthy alley, covered by his cooling prey and even the stars have names now. He didn’t know his head was so full of thoughts and memories, going back much further than he knew was possible. He’s Spike, a centuries old vampire, who died twice, won a soul and became a champion. Lost his world and turned human, shanshued. Found his love and lost everything for her once more. That makes, how many times has he died now? Last time he was killed by vampires, again.

He pushes off the dead meat and stands for a moment, looking down on it. Something’s missing. He should feel something, perhaps, but he can’t think what. Well, never mind, it’ll come to him. He heaves the carcass behind a couple of trash bins and walks off. His body doesn’t move the way he’s accustomed to. He shakes his arm experimentally and it still feels as if the flesh will fall off his bones if he goes on. Peculiar. He pulls at a strand of his longish hair and shakes his head. Tsk. He’ll really have to bleach it before surprising Buffy. He needs to be pretty for her.

He walks up to a phone booth and rips out the directory. And whaddya know, there is a B. Summers in there. Islington address. Terrible neighborhood, but then, it’s been a while since he was in London. These things change. He saunters off and grins when he sees the reactions of the passers-by. He’s the Big Bad, alright, striking terror in the hearts of the bleating buggering sheep.

*

Spike hurls himself out of the house, barely making it to the sewer entrance in time, in spite of the overcast and gray day. Once inside he throws himself into a tearing run, not caring where he's going, as long as it's away. Everything in him that is vampire longs to return and spend his anger on Buffy directly. He wants to punch her and kick her, make her bleed, but of course, he can’t let himself. They don’t fight like that anymore, certainly not now that she's pregnant. When he finds himself in a dead end tunnel, the wall stands in for her and he pummels it until his fists are bleeding. He sinks down on his haunches and covers his face with his palms.

He doesn't cry, he’s not sad, just really really pissed off. He knows Buffy didn't mean to do the most hurtful thing she could think of, but it does feel that way. All kinds of smaller and larger slights pop up in his brains, things he thought long forgotten. Buffy can still forget sometimes he's not human, even after ten years, blithely going places in the daylight when he'd have wanted to accompany her. Which is ridiculous, because he shouldn’t begrudge her the sun, should he? It's also silly to dredge up these things now. It’s just his own hurt feelings, looping into themselves and trying to take him down into even more misery and lack of worth.

No. He’s not going to go there. Buffy did this, by herself and for herself, probably even for him, giving him a child that would look like him. It’s no reflection on him. He’s not even that angry anymore. He should really get over his transdimensional jealousy issues. Buffy meant well, she wanted a kid that was as close as possible to the kid he would have given her if he'd been human, apart from the whole being long dead issue. What would he have preferred, having Harris's eyes stare back at him from his own kid's face? Not likely.

He agreed to her getting knocked up by some other bloke, he hadn't thought of denying her that for a single moment. Maybe he would have felt this way about anyone. Agreeing with your head isn’t always the same as knowing what it’s gonna do to your heart, though, is it? So she'd shown her usual crappy judgment and gone for a human Spike. He knows her; she wouldn’t have stopped to think if and how it would affect him. He loves her still, he supposes, he’ll never ever stop, and he should be bigger than this.

At this moment, he just can’t get very enthusiastic about seeing Buffy, which is scary. He went from angry and jealous to resigned and quietly disappointed in no time. What does that say about their love? Maybe they’ve grown past the first flashy stages of being in love, it’s been ten years after all, and this is what middle aged people feel, quiet affection. The sheer thought of quiet affection makes him want to wring her neck though, so that’s probably not such an apt description. If they could just have a proper fight, knock each other about a bit to clear the air. Buffy being pregnant means all kinds of things they usually do need to stay bottled up and that’s not healthy for either of them. Buffy can’t go out and kill, and out of sympathy for her, he’s been doing less of it as well.

Spike gets up and starts walking back, trying to find a way out of the maze of tunnels he's in. He's managed to lose his way pretty thoroughly. Maybe he’s been running about pell-mell longer than he thought. He doesn't know this part of the London tunnels at all, and he resigns himself to a long walk. It’s not that unpleasant. He works his way slowly upwards, trying to guess where he is by smell and sound, and the amount of rock between him and the sky. It's a distraction from his thoughts, which keep twisting and turning and putting him back in front of that brick wall. His anger feels heavy and inert, not flaring up but not going away either.

He stops suddenly. Close to him, a train thunders by. His bones rattle with the deep thrumming of wheels and his teeth ache with the shriek of metal on metal. He still doesn’t know where he is, but he should soon if he can get to the underground railway.

Out of nowhere, a great big hulking Fyarl tears past him, in so much of a hurry that he doesn’t even notice Spike. His big ugly face is twisted in fear and Spike perks up a little. Killing something would be a nice distraction. He hears the pursuing demon long before he can see him and is ready to meet him up. He extends his leg hopefully. A blue floppy eared guy barrels into his leg on schedule and goes arse over tit with a slew of colorful curses. Spike hauls him up by the scruff of his neck and starts punching. It feels good to land his fists on flesh instead of stone, to hear the squish and splat of ichor flying, the grunts when he hits home, when the demon hits back and he feels the pain of physical acknowledgment.

The bluebell demon reacts enthusiastically and they appear to be evenly matched. After a bit, the lack of personal hatred starts to wear on Spike. The demon seems to feel the same way.

"How about a pint, mate?" he offers suddenly between pants. "Don’t really have anything against you. Fucking Fyarl's gone by now, anyway."

Sounds like his kind of fellow, this blue guy. Besides, if he can lead Spike to a pub he'd get a clue as to where he is.

His new friend, name of Bert, takes his arm and they stroll along slowly to their destination. Spike offers him a fag, but Bert declines.

"The missus don’t like me smoking anymore," he confides in Spike.

Spike grunts in sympathy. He's been banned from smoking around the house for months now.

"Bloody Fyarl bastard,” Bert goes on morosely. "Been making eyes at the missus for weeks, and this morning I come home and find them snogging on the stairs. Lemme tell you, that can only mean one thing. Women."

"Same here," Spike says. "My missus is with spawn, and this morning I find out it's from the guy I hate most in the whole world."

"Thought you vampires couldn’t spawn?" Bert says.

"Nah, she’s human," Spike admits. "Wanted kids, which is only natural, so I said I was okay with it. Kinda liked the idea, actually. Turns out she found some fellow in an alternate reality, who was really me only human."

"Erm? " Bert says. “Isn’t that better than just any bloke? Shows she loves you, don’t it?"

"Yeah? No. I don’t know. Pisses me off no end, for some reason. We had a run in years ago about the same thing. She’d been sleeping with another alternate reality version of me, thought I was dead. Didn’t like that either."

"Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, mate." Bert says frankly. “I’ll buy you a pint anyway. Here it is.”

A dusty emergency door opens up to a cozy brick-lined cave, lit by candles and gas-lamps. Hunched shapes sit around in the murky gloom, talking softly. The telly is on, showing a steeplechase.

“Give us two of your best, Gertie," Bert says to the strapping barmaid of indeterminate origin behind the tap. Some human in there, Spike reckons, bit of Fyarl and maybe Brachen.

The beer goes down a treat. Demons really know how to brew, without all these annoying EU regulations that are destroying real British beer. Spike smacks his lips and sighs. He swivels on his seat to take in the rest of the clientele. He wants to remember this pub, because it would be nice to consort with humans a bit less than he has in the last ten years. They can be nice, humans can, but in the long end, their petty concerns start to grate on you. They seem incapable of taking the long view.

Bert and Spike become very good friends over many, many pints. At a certain point Spike feels it's time for something a little stronger and springs for a bottle of JD. Bert reciprocates and things get a bit hazy after that.

When the haze clears, he finds himself in a human night club, bopping up and down on some neo-punk rock, without Bert, and without a single clue how he got there or what he's doing. How much time has passed? He staggers off to the exit and props up his unsteady self against the outside wall. When the cold night air hits him, his stomach rebels and he vomits up a mixture of beer and old blood. He rests his aching pounding head against the cool bricks for a moment. After a few minutes he starts to feel better.

Spike hauls his reluctant carcass up to the roof, lies down on his back and stares at the stars. They stare back with reproof in their twinkly little eyes. Buffy must be worried by now, he should get back. He really should. He lies there with his hands under his head and doesn’t feel like confronting her yet. A faint wind wafts the scents and sounds of the wild night to him, and he feels like a hound that's been released from a kennel into the crisp frosty air, after months of fug and too much closeness. He's still a vampire and he’s

gonna hunt and have some fun tonight. The moon is round, demon dogs are baying and it's time to join the Hunt.

The clatter of hobnailed boots alerts him and he spots a group of game-faced vamps traveling the rooftops. His guts stir with the promise of violence and he takes off after them, a stake at the ready. This is very close to being exciting, even if it’s only a pack of fledglings. The little group, two tall lanky boy Goths and one short plump scarlet-haired female, get wind of his pursuit and pick up the pace. They know London’s rooftops well and he has a hard time keeping up with them. He’s out of practice. Florence roofs have a completely different rhythm and a couple of times he almost falls. He finds them again on top of the BBC Broadcasting House, huddled around a fire, chanting some gobbledygook and waving wands. Great. They’re trying a magic ritual.

Another vamp tears across his path in a flaming hurry, and when he detects a slayerly tingle to his left, he pulls up to let the girl pass to follow her prey. He doesn't know her personally, but the Slayer Academy is so full of girls these days that he’s stopped trying to keep up.

The unknown slayer halts too, at what she probably imagines to be out of sensory range, and conceals herself behind a chimney. Spike sighs. Lost the scent of her prey and has glommed onto him, eh? He decides to set her right and turns back towards her. A last look at the vamp congregation confirms they’re still at their nefarious thing, which he’s not taking that seriously, but if the slayer makes him lose his prey, she’ll get a snootful.

“Oi!” he shouts. “Slayer!”

Her heart rate triples from behind the smoke stack, but she doesn’t show herself. Thinks she’s hiding, the stupid bint. It's a shame they’re letting these inexperienced little tarts go out hunting alone these days. Wouldn’t ever happen in his classes, that's for sure.

“Come on, love! If you’re looking for that skanky vamp just passed me, dreadlocks, yea high, he’s gone off. I’m William the Bloody and you don’t want to be fighting me. And if you think you can muscle in on my kill you’ve got to be joking.”

He’s closer now. The not so little slayer is quivering and sweating in her hidey hole. God, she’s stupid. If he still was a real vamp, he’d have her totally cornered.

She cannons into him at the last possible moment. His eyes confirm what he already knew from his other senses, that he doesn’t know her. She’s a tall, athletically built girl, a bit like an Asian Cordelia. She tries to punch him out, and he leans back an inch to avoid her sloppy strike. He sighs again.

“Listen up, you little fool, I’m Spike, who you ought to know about if you’d been paying attention in class. I’m with Buffy Summers, the oldest Slayer. I suppose you do know her name?”

The girl bares her teeth at him and tries to get behind his defense. Her moves are ludicrous, telegraphed so far in advance he could read a book while waiting for them. Spike loses his patience after a minute of this and tackles her to the roof. He sits on her hips, holding her hands in one of his and pockets her stake.

The girl bucks and heaves and grunts with anger. “The word’s out on you,” she spits out. “Everybody knows you’re killing again, and Buffy left you.”

Spike’s so surprised he drops his guard and the little slayer flips them over and sits on him in her turn. He catches her flailing hands again. She’s persistent, though, and keeps grinding and twisting on him, with the predictable result of making him hard. Spike ignores this minor side-effect.

“Who’s saying this? I don’t believe Buffy’s told anybody anything, that’s not her style at all. Who, then? Willow?”

“Director Rosenberg is out of town. Deputy Smyth has given out the bulletin.”

Spike doesn’t know Smyth, but he’d better make some phone calls before this escalates any further. The girl is still working herself against him, and she has to have noticed what she’s rubbing up against. Spike’s bemused, but it is starting to get to his attention.

“Lay off, girlie. ‘S not a good thing to taunt a vampire. Some might take you up on it.”

“Come on then,“ she pants. “You must be gagging for it, if Buffy kicked you out. All the girls say you’re the best fuck ever.”

What the hell? The little tarts are gabbing about him already? Buffy must have been on the phone to Willow the minute he hit the streets. The girl manages to wrest one hand loose, but instead of going for her stake, she zips open her fleece hoodie, revealing a tiny low-cut top. Her breasts are utterly brilliant, best he’s ever seen, but it’s still annoying rather than alluring.

“I know you want to touch them.“

Her voice tries to be low and seductive. She’s clearly expecting to be taken up on her offer immediately, and sounds commanding rather than entreating. Spike can’t stop himself from checking out the amazing breasts again, and she gasps in triumph and arousal. She gropes for his cock through the thick denim and in spite of himself, he finds this to be getting rather interesting. Hot young slayer hips swivel on him, hard muscled thighs grip his in sharp contrast to the softly gleaming flesh of her bosom. He thinks for a fleeting moment of paying Buffy back in the same coin, but it lasts no longer than that.

A quick anonymous fuck is no longer his style, especially as there can be no kill after and the chit would blab about it to all her buddies. He’s not that mad at Buffy, and there’s clearly been enough talk about him already. He yanks her off with a brutal twist of her arm and pulls her squealing, protesting form upright.

“Now, Miss-too-young-to-know-better, off with you. Either you go quietly and don’t follow me, or I’ll throw you off this roof. It won’t kill you, but it will immobilize you for a couple of painful weeks, right?”

She nods sulkily. He gives her a slap on her tight curvy bum to send her off and thinks belatedly that he shouldn’t have. It’ll only encourage her. Never mind. She slopes off as she promised, but he waits until she’s completely out of range before going after the vampires again. Now he really needs to kill something quick to get his mind off fucking.

The sodding idiots don’t even hear him coming. He lands boots first in the silly fire, putting it out, grabs the biggest wand and rakes it through the stunned fledglings in a big sweeping arc. They squeal and panic, effectively presenting him with their chests one by one as they run around like mindless chickens. He rips off a few heads after his stake dusts accidentally and it’s over all too soon.

After thoroughly destroying the magical implements Spike gets on his way to an out-of-use underground station to crash, sore and bleeding, but content. He scores fags and a few bottles of whiskey so he can drink himself into oblivion again. Even ripping off those vampires’ heads with his bare hands hasn’t been enough to take his mind off Buffy and what she’s been telling Willow, or even the annoying little Slayer who jiggled her breasts at him. This can only lead to trouble; he urgently needs to be drunk again, preferably unconscious. Thinking can wait.

He tips the bottle to his mouth while he’s walking along. A shriek pierces the air and he splutters and coughs as the liquid goes down wrong.

“Spike! I found you!”

“Dawn?”

Chapter 3

Buffy hasn't seen Spike in two weeks. When she comes back from her Lamaze session one evening, she glimpses a flash of blue eyes and platinum hair. The gray misery she's been wrapped up in ever since he left lightens up a little. She's sorry she's doubted him. Spike will always come back to her, she thinks, but then realizes this isn't completely true. She's had to go after him before. So she'll have to count herself lucky if he keeps to his end of the bargain.

She slows her pace deliberately, hoping he'll see the invitation and follow her home. When she's standing in front of her own building, key in hand, disappointed because he hasn't appeared, she feels a whoosh of cold air swirl around her and there he is. A frisson of terror races through her and she feels a faint for a moment. He's night personified. It wraps darkly round his pale limbs and churns in his golden eyes. She's never been afraid of him before, but she is now. Afraid for two. "Spike? I was hoping you'd show up," she says and holds out her hands to him.

He growls, still showing her his snarling predator's mask. Or perhaps he's showing her who he really is, and his blue-eyed face of beauty is the false front.

"Spike?" she says again. "Honey?"

He sighs very humanly and the vampire face slides off, leaving a pale, unhealthy looking man with incongruous bleached curls catching the inadequate lamp light.

"Hey," he says softly and slides into her arms.

He's cold and hard against her, and for a moment, she has a terrible flashback of a former, cockier Spike, strutting around in that perfect body, daring her to show her appreciation of it. But this incarnation leans heavily on her and looks ravaged and torn, all the cockiness and strut kicked out of him - mostly by her.

"Come," she says, and they walk silently up the stairs to their flat. She turns on the lights and turns back to Spike, who is standing with a strange exhausted patience on the doorstep.

He looks terrible, just outside the threshold of her brightly-lit hallway. His smooth ivory color has disappeared and a deathly bluish pallor has taken its place. Have the last weeks been so hard on him?

"Oh, Spike," she says. "You look so…"

"Dead? Right, coz I am. Now let me in. Time's a-wasting."

The texture of his voice is more ragged than his normal sound, like he's been screaming it hoarse. Slurred and a bit raspy, booze she supposes. Not the first time, and it fits what she’s been imagining, Spike on a miserable two-week drinking spree.

"Come in then, baby, what are you waiting for?"

It comes out pitifully small and scared and his face softens as he steps over the threshold.

"You're scared, ain't you? It’s just me, same old Spike, dead or alive."

She touches his face with trembling fingers and he leans his cheek into it with a deep sigh. He's filthy, his face streaked with alternating stripes of pale skin and dust, flecked with blood. In his neck is a ragged half-healed wound, which looks as if a lion has been chewing on him.

"Give us a hug, love," he mumbles, leaning heavily on her.

They stagger to the couch together. Spike slides his head in her lap limply, like he's deathly tired.

"Are you alright, Spike? What happened? You look so…"

"Dead. Been through that one, Buff. Yeah." He rolls over and lies staring at the ceiling, throat working. "Hasn’t been a fun ride. I've come a long way." He inspects the nails of his left hand, which are too short to have dirt under them, but the fingertips are blackened and bloody.

"Oh, Spike," Buffy says and is furious at herself. This is about the third time she has contributed these insightful words to the conversation and they aren’t getting any wittier or more useful. She strokes his matted bleached curls. The texture of his hair is drier than she remembers.

"Are you hungry? I have blood in the refrigerator?"

His eyes flash yellow and he hides his face in her belly. "That would be a yes, my darling."

He accompanies the words with a sickly close-mouthed grin, which shows muscles that pull oddly crooked and lips that are not a healthy pink. His filthy, lead colored face, the smell of earth, his general condition would repulse her if she didn’t already love him so much. She lets his tired head slide gently down on the couch and hurries to the kitchen. Her fingers scrabble over the jumble of provisions in her fridge. She’s been too tired and dispirited to store them in their normal order. She finds the bags of blood, empties one in a mug, heats it and takes two others with her into the living room.

Spike lies on the couch with his limbs flung out in abandon, like a corpse, like her mother, and for a single scary moment she's sure he is a real dead guy, not her vampire.

She slides her legs under his head again. He doesn't move. She slowly moves the mug closer to his face. In a motion almost too fast for her to follow, like a cobra striking, his face is in the mug and he’s gulping it down. The mug is clamped to a fierce yellow-eyed face, the eyes following her warily when she wants to reach for the other two packets. He rips them out of her hand and tears into them, almost inhaling the blood, not spilling so much as a single drop. She sees him shudder ecstatically as he drinks and notices his hard-on. She's never seen him like this. He holds his stomach when he's finished all the pig blood and rubs it with a grimace.

"What's the matter, Spike?"

"Dunno. Feels wrong, feels nasty."

She helps him up, lets him lean on her as they make their way to the bathroom. She showers the dirt and the blood off him, but she's disappointed in his appearance when he's toweled off and dressed in her robe. He may be clean, but he doesn’t look that much better than before, as if the blood had no effect at all. The wound in his neck should be healed by now.

She raises her fingers close to the wound, but not on it, a little ashamed of her fastidiousness but not prepared to touch it.

"You seem to be healing slow, Spike. Haven’t you been eating right?"

He grunts and turns to the mirror to check it out.

Buffy can't remember him ever forgetting he’s a vampire.

"Oh, God, Buffy," he says and hides his face in his hands.

Buffy's heart bursts with painful love and she hugs him tightly.

"I'm sorry…Are you still mad?" she asks timidly.

Spike starts stroking her arm rhythmically, up and down, and keeps his eyes on it when he answers her. It's little uncomfortable, his rough fingers snag on her skin, but she doesn’t want to say so.

"Yeah. That was a nasty trick you pulled on me."

Her throat closes. Yeah. She's sorry. But if he’s come back, everything should be all right.

He still doesn’t look right. He looks like a Spike-zombie. She escorts him to her bed. He won’t allow her to lie down next to him.

"I don’t know if I can keep it together, Buffy. Don’t wanna kill you by accident, do I?"

No, of course not. Why's he saying this? He’s never even come close to killing her.

"Should I get more blood, Spike? Do you need more?"

He looks sickened at the thought, but nods. "Best get more."

Spike coils tightly under the bedclothes, shivering and holding his knees. She'd better get going, this is not looking good. What could be the matter with him?

Buffy phones a cab and finds the all-night butcher's in Camden. She gets home with a selection of bovine, chicken and sheep's blood. Hopefully that'll help. What could have gone wrong with Spike's wounds? Has he been bitten and infected by some new kind of demon?

Spike slobbers down all her offerings. He hardly seems conscious of what he's doing, let alone able to think about table manners. She's never seen him anything other than neat and elegant. Buffy settles on the couch uneasily.

Her sleep is marred by inky nightmares seeping slowly into the Technicolor of her dreams. Almost recognizable shapes creep along the edges of her sleep world, eating it, blackening. She retreats deeper and deeper into the red warmth, cocooning herself, wishing the encroaching terror away, but inevitably the icy chill starts in on her neck.

She wakes up gasping, feeling cold and smothered at the same time. Spike is crouched over her, leaning some of his weight on her chest and bulging belly, lapping at her neck with his cold slimy tongue, sniffling like Gollum and about as attractive. Buffy snips on the reading light. Spike's eyes are closed in his bumpy face, she can see his eyes move busily behind them, dreaming his vampire dreams. Buffy can pretty much guess what they are. His hips are humping hers clumsily, his hard-on bumps now against her hip bone, then her lower belly, all through a layer of blanket and jammies. Pity and disgust clog the entrance of her throat, making it hard for breath to pass through. Oh Spike. He's really sick. She needs to help him, make him better.

She shimmies out of her pajamas, shivering a little. Should she wake him or just go along with his obvious dream wishes? She licks her fingers and lubricates herself with a little spit. Sleepiness and a little revulsion make her dry as a bone, and she feels ashamed. He's just sick, that's all. She turns to her side and guides him inside her, not looking too closely at the dead meat that slides in. He always was dead, she tells herself. She's tight and dry, and he grunts in frustration as he seeks deeper entrance. She draws her hair to the other side of her head and pushes her throat against his opened mouth.

She can see and feel the conflict on the battlefield of his face. Bumps retreat, then form again. He growls, frowns in human face, drools on her neck in game mask, the bucking of his hips grows more urgent. She loves him too much watch this anymore. She slaps his face, and calls his name.

"Spike!"

His eyes snap open, blinding her with their golden flare.

"Buffy…" he growls, and licks her neck with a long slow stroke. In spite of herself, she melts before the animal, feeling him slide deeper into her suddenly slippery pussy.

"Aaah…" he sighs, and his Spike-face returns, eyes scrunched up in pain or ecstasy, she can't tell.

"Spike, you're not healing well," she says. She can't see lot of detail in the yellow glow of the small lamp, but her fingers feel spongy textures and slide into fissures she'd rather not know were there.

Spike grunts in her neck, his voice slurred. "Buffy…"

He's still fighting something. His shoulders are knotted wood, and he clenches his teeth and shakes his head. His stomach vibrates against her and he's involuntarily thrusting on. He's nuzzling her neck, gnawing on her jugular. He likes to do that, but he's a bit rough tonight. Suddenly, the vampire mask bursts through again with that tearing, breaking sound and he bites her neck, hard. Her skin popping makes a sound too, not as loud as she thought it would. It’s so unexpected, so not like Spike, that she shudders in fear and surprise. Her whole body breaks out in pinpricks of sweat and she's awash in blood red lust. Her own voice keens in her ears. Spike pushes her on her back, although he knows she doesn’t like that now, all that pressure on her belly, he’s fucking her frantically and hard and she is ready for orgasm with sickening speed. Her mind spins circles of frightened thoughts, she has no idea how much he can take safely or how long he has to drink to have enough. He spasms against her hard, too hard, she’ll bruise, but she comes violently instead. He roars bloody bubbles against her shoulders, and she tries to tear him off, this must be enough, she's so scared, it would be so easy to slide over the precipice into blissful death, she won’t, the baby, she can’t.

Her hips slide out from under him and she kicks up her knees to hit him anywhere she can, slaps him, yells, "Spike, let go!" and finally he does. She crawls to a sitting position, clamping her hand on the wound in her neck. It’s not the jugular; she realizes dazedly, it's lower in her shoulder. Whatever is wrong with him, he remembered to take care of her. Oh God, the baby, it can’t be good to lose blood now. She wipes away a few annoying tears to get a better look at him.

Spike is on all fours on the couch, cowering like a miserable dog with shivering flanks and bloodied mouth. She leaves him to his solitary misery for a few seconds to switch on the overhead light and see if the healing she expects has started. She thinks it has. His color is less leaden, paler, the fissures she hasn’t seen but felt are gone. The luminous glow he used to have isn’t in evidence yet, but he looks like Spike again and not a refugee from Night of the Living Dead. She runs her hand over his newly smooth back and puts it on his neck.

"Sweetie? You alright?"

Spike butts his head against her belly, still in doggy mode, refusing to show his face.

She stays like that for a long time, just stroking his head and shoulders, seeing the shivering slowly go down and his breathing become less ragged.

"Spike?"

He looks up and puts his hand on her swollen belly, smiling beatifically. "Mine," he says, still in that low growling voice.

Her heart bounds up and runs off in fear. She’s seeing him clearly from the first time tonight, and this can’t be her Spike. His right hand is misshapen; the fourth and last fingers are missing and one digit of the middle finger. His teeth are brown, with gaps showing. His eyes are not their usual blue, but clouded and milky, and the greenish sheen of death still hasn’t left him. This is not the work of two weeks absence. How did she miss that in the bathroom? He sat hunched over with his arms against his chest, and she just mindlessly sponged him down, not really looking, she guesses.

"Who are you?"

He crooks his head and nuzzles her belly with a sly grin. "Spike, silly Buffy. Who else?"

He dips his fingers in her still sopping pussy and licks them off with a dreamy look on his face. "Missed your taste. So much better now I’ve got my proper nose back."

He rubs his nose all over her belly again, pokes a little too hard at her distended navel and travels further to her armpits.

"Mmm."

Buffy stands petrified with dread and suspicion. What did he say? Proper nose back?

He grins at her, wide and unsettling. The teeth. She claps her hand before her mouth to shut her self up. The browned teeth, with the first molar missing on the left. Just like the human Spike on the beach. This can’t be him. This is a vampire!

"Are you human Spike? The one I stayed with in LA?"

He vamps out again, growls and cuffs her hard. Buffy smacks against the couch and takes a painful fall to the floor. Her hip and knee hurt and she's too stupefied to react quickly.

"Don’t you know me? Are we all the same to you? Stupid cunt."

She remembers him as nice enough in his pathetic, broken way, but vamping hasn’t improved him. How did he get here? Why is he a vampire again, and such a miserable ruined one?

“Do you have a soul?” she asks.

He vamps out and throws her down on the floor with her legs in the air. He thrusts roughly inside her again before he answers. She’s limp as putty, her arms feel too heavy to lift.

“What do you think, Buffy? I got a soul to win you once, and now I lost it to get you back. You’re mine. You shouldn’t have died again. You shouldn’t have left me. Tell me you love me.”

Her mind gibbers and cackles inanely at that, while her body lubricates and shivers under his onslaught. Stupid body, this isn’t the right one. Love this thing? How can he think he compares to her good and beautiful Spike.

“I’m not yours,” she says clearly and slowly. “Go away. You’re not my Spike.”

He sits back, showing his hollow belly. His big hand, the whole one, clamps hard around her belly. “This is mine. And you will be. Look into my eyes and tell me you love me.”

Buffy lifts her chin defiantly and stares back into his burning red rimmed eyes. “I…I love you.”

Where did that come from? She tries to say more, but when he lifts her chin gently with his finger and his eyes stare into hers with so much love she melts and gives in. Of course she loves him. He’s the father of her baby.

*

"Spike?"

Spike smells a familiar scent. He tries to turn away, but he’s been spotted. He should have stayed off the streets, taken the roofs or the sewers instead. He tries to focus his eyes. “Dawn?“

"I found you! Are you alright? What are you doing here? I was so worried! Why haven’t you contacted us? Buffy won't talk to anyone, and you’re AWOL! We didn’t know what to do anymore."

Dawn keeps on talking to him urgently. He has a hard time tracking her words.

"None of your business, Dawn. I'll sort myself out, okay? Just go home, or do whatever you were doing."

"I was having a night out with my friends," Dawn says. "And don’t be silly. If you’re not going home to Buffy, where were you going to sleep? The sewers? Come home with me and sleep on the couch."

"Home? Oxford?"

"Did you forget everything?" Dawn says, some asperity in her voice now. "I was going to be in town for a few months, to help you guys with the baby. I'm staying in a friend’s flat."

Spike gives in. He’s not feeling too good right now. Must have taken a pounding, though he wishes he could remember how and by whom. He looks at Dawn. This is not a good part of town, what’s she doing here exactly? She's not dressed like the normal sweater set-and-tweeds academic Dawn, either. This one is all cleavage and legs and make-up.

"I'll come. And I could have gone to a hotel, you know, like a regular person. I have money."

Though he can’t find his wallet at present. Dawn looks at him with a kind of indulgent maternal amusement, which makes him feel rebellious and sexy at the same time. He earns a regular wage from the council, doesn’t he? It may be a bit weird to be in Willow's employ, but him and Buffy felt like free operators, roaming the world in search of big bads. A good life. A sodding wonderful life. A tear trickles down his nose. He shouldn’t have run off like that. Buffy will be missing him.

Dawn signals a cab, a real feat at this hour of night, and proceeds to cart him to her flat. He follows docilely, obscurely glad to be rescued from an ignominious sewer night, and not ready to return home just yet.

He hopes he’s gonna be spared a talking-to from the concerned sister; he just needs to crash and drink himself even sillier to be able to sleep. He isn’t so far gone that he forgets his manners and allows her to go first through the door. She rolls her eyes.

"Come in, Spike."

Christ, it’s six in the morning. Has he been gallivanting across town for one or two nights? Spike pulls out one of the uncomfortable chairs she has in the guestroom and she perches on it, like an expensive tropical bird in her colorful finery. He hasn’t seen her for a bit, and her hair has grown really long again. He’s always loved that long straight shiny hair.

"You weren’t on the lookout for me, were you?”

“Let’s skip the chitchat, Spike. I talked to Buffy.”

“Oh.”

Spike sits down heavily on the bed. He feels appallingly sober again. A waste of bad whiskey.

“What’s she say, Dawn?”

Dawn turns her chair to face him and leans forward, her forearms propped up on her thighs. “That you two had an argument, and that you stormed off. Really, Spike, I know Buffy can be…difficult, but to run off now of all times? She’s almost nine months pregnant, for God’s sake.”

“Eight and a bit, Dawn. No need to remind me. I was there for most of it, remember?”

“Yeah.” Dawn initiates a delicate silence. “But…you can’t have been there at the very beginning, can you? Or did Willow do some kind of spell?”

Spike sighs. It’s really his evening for expelling long gusts of breath. “Don’t try to finesse me into telling you things Buffy hasn’t told you. None of your business what happened.”

“So that has nothing to do with your spat?”

Spat? If only.

"Is she okay?"

Dawn shrugs. "Who can tell with Buffy? She sounded normal. Evasive."

"But did she look okay?"

Dawn blushes faintly. "I didn't exactly see her, we talked on the phone, and we didn't set a date to meet. Which was weird. And I went to her house last evening and she wasn't home or pretended not to be. So I thought we could try and get in together. You still have a key, don't you?"

"Yeah," Spike says.

He feels a deep reluctance to involve Dawn in this. It should remain between him and Buffy.

Dawn seems to sense his withdrawal. She leans forward again and puts her hand on his leg. It burns hotly and it's even harder to think of what to do than before. He's drunk, tired and horny. Not in a fit state to talk to Buffy or even make decisions. He rubs his hands in his eyes to make the grit go away. A cold shower would be good right now, a very long and very cold one. Dawn moves over to the bed, sitting down right next to him. She's sitting way too close, blood warm human being that she is, sleepy girly perfume clouding his senses, especially his common sense. He can't think like that.

Dawn puts her arm around him. "I understand, Spike. If you need a shoulder to cry on, or, anything, I'm here."

He's too surprised and tired to resist when she pulls his head down on her scantily clad bosom. Her heart is beating a fast riff and it would be so easy to let himself sink into that soft flesh and forget about everything for a few moments. What's Dawn thinking? He lifts his head and looks into her warm inviting eyes.

"Spike..." she breathes and leans into him, her hand tightening on his leg.

She wants to kiss him? Bad plan, very bad plan. He may be drunk, but not that drunk. He won't deny that Dawn has a very special place in his heart, or that he used to have completely illegal and unbrotherly thoughts about her, but that was long ago. No way is he going to go there.

"Dawn, please...”

He gently pries her hands off his body and sits back a few feet. "All I can think of is going back to Buffy."

He tries to say as little as possible. Dawn is a woman of deep feelings and a great capacity for revenge, and he would rather stay on her good side.

"It's too late to visit Buffy now, Dawn. She needs her sleep. I'll sleep off the booze and try her this evening, okay? I'll keep you informed. Deal?"

Dawn nods reluctantly. She puts her hand on his cheek and again tries to look deep into his eyes. "I understand, Spike. We've always been close, and I've always admired your patience with Buffy." She kisses him quickly on his lips, before he can stop her. "Remember, I'm here for you. Always."

Spike stares after her. This is really the last thing he needs, and the very last thing he expected. Dawn's acting as if they haven't been having a mostly distant, though friendly, relationship for years. She's never given any hint of retaining her teenage crush. He sits up again, unable to leave off thinking about this. Would he have acted differently if he'd always known that? Gone after her instead of Buffy? Although, admittedly, Buffy'd gone after him. It's weird to become aware of a choice you could have made a decade ago without knowing about it at the time. It could change everything, if he wanted to.

But he doesn't. He's made his choice a long time ago and he’ll stick with it. He'll visit Buffy soon. Very soon. First, he has to contact Willow about the ridiculous rumors the Slayer Lite was talking about. His head hurts from all this stuff and he closes the drapes and crawls under the covers. Sleep now.

*

Dawn enters the guestroom two seconds after he’s closed his eyes.

“Hey. Brought you some blood.”

Spike pries open one eye and tries to get a firm grip on the mug. Dawn steadies his hand with her two small warm ones and it takes his brain a few seconds to parse why this isn’t exactly making him feel good. Oh shit. He gulps down the mug of blood quickly and tries to make sure he’s decently covered with his other hand. If he remembers last night correctly it would be a very bad idea to have his tackle on display; might give her the wrong idea, early morning and all.

Except that it’s three o’clock in the afternoon on the bedside clock. It’s a digital clock and the date is all wrong. Weeks ahead, it is.

“Dawn? Is that clock right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But…it can’t be. I haven’t been away for three weeks! I haven’t!”

She scoots closer to him and grabs his arm firmly.

"We need to talk about that, Spike. Willow asked me to look into some rumors that have been going round. You've been spotted several times near the river, apparently killing people. I would never have believed that, Spike, but Buffy was weirdly evasive on the phone when I asked to speak to you yesterday, and I found you in a very sleazy part of town, drunk, filthy, …what's up with you, Spike?"

That is so Buffy. Instead of pouring her heart out to her sister, she prefers to keep mum and keep up a front. Silly bint. The other thing is really worrying. Three weeks? Did someone slip him a Mickey Finn?

“Of course I’m not killing again, Dawn. Are you insane? After twelve years with a soul, ten years spent with Buffy – if that’s not enough to establish my credibility, what will?”

Dawn still eyes him skeptically. “Yeah, but maybe that was the reason Buffy kicked you out? What other reason could there be for you guys to break up?”

“Stop fishing, Dawn!”

Dawn bends forward to pick up a folder and Spike hastily tears his eyes away from the expanse of milky white flesh that her decollete’d sweater reveals. She shows him a grainy picture of a platinum-haired man.

“Yeah, so?” he says, and gives it back.

“Is that you?” Dawn asks, and it’s clear she’s very serious about this.

She tries to engage his gaze and sits too close.

Spike studies the picture again, irritated now. “Dunno. Could be. It’s too dark to see where it is exactly. The clothes are nondescript. I’d generally wear my duster to go out, though.”

Dawn seems to hear only what she wants, because she consults her notes. “Near the entrance of Wapping tube station.”

“Wapping? What the hell would I be doing in Wapping? So, no, it isn’t me.”

So this is what the Slayer he met was talking about. Rumors, based on this spotting, must be flying around the Council offices. It won’t be that hard to discount them.

Spike wants to get up, but because he feels the urgent need to cover himself around this unsisterly incarnation of Dawn, he struggles to wrest the sheet from under her bottom. Dawn looks on with interest. He finally manages to wrap the sheet around his waist in a semblance of modesty and stalks off to the bathroom. He returns half a minute later and has to ask her for a towel. This involves waiting around in her hallway while she hunts the borrowed flat for more towels.

“You still work out a lot, I guess?” Dawn says.

Spike refuses to answer. Women. He’s going to shower and leave here as soon as it’s dark. He needs to see Buffy, apologize for staying away this long and talk things out.

Chapter 4

Spike forces himself out of his hangover and spruces himself up, eager to leave Dawn to her strange thoughts and Council folders. Too bad her favorite dark blue shirt is still in its closet at home, but he'll make it a proper reunion, buy flowers and everything. Shag her brains out, shake the kid up a bit, suck on those big hard melony breasts until she squeals. He hardens at the thought but keeps his hands off himself. It should all be for Buffy.

There is a light shining upstairs when he gets home, so he lets himself into the downstairs hall silently. The first thing he notices is that the scent of the house has changed. Of course, he's been away for a while, so it should, but he'd have expected more Buffy and less, yeah, less what? A dead scent, rotted wood, kelp, rust. It makes him twitchy. What has she been doing? Not patrolling and killing stinky briny Thames demons, he hopes. Not in her condition. He imagines her reclining on their bed, big and curvy like a fertility goddess in her crimson and peach silk kimono, eating oranges and shrimp, things she’s been craving lately.

A hum starts up in the house, a deep rhythmic thrumming sound that makes his hackles rise, a sound he knows well. What the hell? He takes the stairs up to their flat three at a time, sodding pointless roses forgotten in his hand, puts his key in the lock and tries to turn it. Bugger. It won’t work. Buffy must have changed the lock on him. But what for? She hasn’t got any particular reason to be angry with him. Okay, he has been away for a couple of weeks, but that wasn't his fault, was it? He was slipped a demonic Mickey Finn of some kind. He didn’t mean to leave her all pregnant and alone this long. Christ. She could have had the baby and he wouldn’t even have known about it. He promises himself he’s going to eviscerate Bert at the earliest opportunity and gives the door a mighty kick.

The door is unimpressed, solid oak and at least a century old. Right. And besides, it’s his own door, and a pesky lot of bother it would be if he'd succeeded. There’s no other option than to ring the bell. The rhythmic thrumming continues unabated. He’s getting a really nasty feeling about it. Sounds like….

He rings the bell again, longer and harder this time. The thrumming halts. He hears shuffling sounds and low voices, but he can’t make out who’s talking. Who is it with Buffy? He already knows he won’t like the answer, but he stays put in front of the door. He needs to know.

The lock clicks and the door swings open. He sees Buffy standing there in her kimono, unbelted and loose over her naked body. Her belly has grown even more and a dark stripe runs from her pubic hair to her navel. Her face is wan and tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes. Spike halts for a moment, powerfully touched to see her again, pregnant, his. His breath burns in his lungs and he could shout out his love for her, returned stronger than ever.

He dashes forward to take her in his arms and runs smash into an invisible barrier. What the hell? Buffy just stands there and looks at him. The expression on her face doesn’t change. He can’t read it at all. He tries to put his hand through the barrier but it’s still impassable. What is this? Has he been disinvited? What for? Why would Buffy react like that?

"Buffy, please, invite me in," he says. “I’m sorry I stayed away for so long, I didn’t mean to. Please, sweetheart?"

She doesn’t move, but he thinks he sees her eyebrows twitch.

"Buffy? What’s the matter with you, baby? Are you feeling all right? Do you need help? Buffy?"

Still no reaction. Spike loses his fragile patience and throws himself against the barrier. He knows it won’t help but he can’t stop himself from ramming into it again and again, battering his own shoulder to a pulp. The barrier is harder than a stone wall.

"Buffy!” he roars. “Open up, for God’s sake! Buffy!"

He sinks down on his knees and rests his forehead against the magical force field. He's going to beg. What does he care about dignity and all that rot when it's Buffy and their child he wants to be with?

"Buffy, please, darling, let me in. Tell me why you’re so angry."

His voice is thick and he puts the palms of his hand flat against the barrier. The tendons and veins stand out thickly, straining for patience. He'd claw his way in if he could. "Buffy….stop fucking about and let me in!"

From the bedroom, a figure appears in the hallway. It’s another Spike, naked and revealed in all his lack of glory. His skin is patchy and discolored; Spike sees missing fingers and he moves as if something’s broken inside. He shuffles over to Buffy and embraces her from behind, laying his hands possessively on her swollen stomach.

"They’re mine now," the apparition says. "My child, my woman. Go away. Betrayer."

His own eyes stare back at him from a distorted mottled face. Discolored lips draw back from the brownish teeth and the other Spike vamps out and growls at him. Buffy seems oblivious; her eyes stare past him. The scene slithers away from his comprehension. The other Spike, here, and looking like someone left him in a dumpster too long? What possible set of circumstances occurred to make him into this? Spike can't even feel anger; the surprise and disappointment are too big to leave room for any other emotion. Buffy with the other Spike again? And he's not completely right, somehow. He smells as if he's discomposing, he's missing fingers and his skin is so pale it’s almost green, mottled with bluish and purplish bruises.

The vamp growls at Spike again. Can he even speak? Then he proves that things can get even worse. The Spike changes into game face with a growl and loud creaking and squishing sounds. He bends over Buffy's neck, lifts up her limp hair and fastens his fangs onto her throat. The popping sound of skin tearing fills Spike’s ears and he fights off the impulse to clap his hands over them.

The sound that comes out of his mouth hurts his own ears. "Buffy! Noo!"

Buffy stands still, apparently unmoved. She bends her neck a little in acquiescence and tucks her hair behind her ear. Spike watches in fascinated horror as the misshapen blotchy hand moves up from her belly to her big taut breast and tweaks the nipple hard. Buffy doesn’t even flinch.

"Buffy! Get away from him! Buffy, invite me in and I'll kill him for you!"

The creature Spike turns his ugly game face in his direction and smirks at him with bloody teeth. "She won't. Will you, my poppet? She's mine now. I deserve her. I'm a Champion, I earned the Shanshu while you didn't. She's rightfully mine. Go away and leave us before I kill you."

Spike roars in frustration. Champion, Shanshu, those are words that don't mean anything real, sops for the disenchanted. It's fine for Angel and his brood of little werewolves, but he never regretted passing on it.

The other Spike very sensibly doesn’t come out to fight; he certainly doesn’t look as if he could hold his own in a proper tussle. Coward. Instead, he pushes Buffy to her knees, slides off the peignoir and kneels behind her. The vamp draws out his huge darkened cock, shakes it at Spike in a show of machismo or bravado or God knows what and thrusts back into Buffy, hard and rough, making her shudder silently. Spike stands motionless in disbelief and horror. He watches Buffy's face for any sign of distress or resistance and just sees blankness.

“Buffy!" Spike says. "Throw him off! Fight him! You're the Slayer, for fuck's sake!"

"Buffy darling," the creature says, grins his brown teeth bare, "tell your ex how you feel about me."

“I love you,” Buffy says.

"Whose child is it?"

"Yours."

"What should happen to your ex-lover?"

"Go away,” she says dully.

He can’t believe what he’s seeing. This can’t be happening. Buffy would never allow herself to be used like that. She wouldn’t suddenly fall in love with a zombie Spike. The Spike thrusts a few times into Buffy and then changes his mind. He gets up, his shiny lubricated cock bobbing, and kicks the door shut in Spike’s face, leaving him chilled and dumbstruck in the white, brightly lit outer hall. How? What? His hands sting. They are resting on the bunch of fallen roses, the slow drops of blood that well from the tiny wounds as dark red as the roses themselves. He tears off the velvety heads and flings them against the door. So much for love, for years of happiness.

Spike falls prey to another senseless attack of anger and actually manages to crack the door a little bit, and his own head. He gathers his scattered wits and stumbles down the stairs. Buffy doesn’t love him anymore. How did this happen?

He really needs to kill something right now. Seeing as that he's so unlucky in love, the fates will be with him tonight. He runs head first into a clot of snarling vamps before he's even started looking. He charges into them with an earsplitting battle yell and rips heads off the first two before they can react. Sodding fledgling idiots. He slams his game face on and mows down all who come near. There's a red haze of bloody rage in front of his eyes, and blood keeps pouring down in his face in streams and streams of salt.

In the darkest coldest part of the night he finds himself again at Dawn's door. His hands leave bloody streaks on the plaster where he's leaning against it in exhausted grief. Dawn opens the door in her robe, clearly just awakened. Spike just wants to hide anonymously under some thick bed covers until the world goes away, but of course he'll have to say something to her, give some explanation.

He just stands there in Dawn's tiny living room, opening and closing his mouth like a dying fish. No sound comes out.

"Spike?"

A warm, concerned hand on his shoulder. "Did things not go well with Buffy?"

Spike takes a breath but his ribs hurt. He shakes his head and tries to get away from the sympathy in her eyes, which makes it worse. Dawn's eyes are trying to draw words out of him and he just wants to run and hide.

Dawn comes around to his front and stands close, her sleep-warm body pressing into his, crowding him. Her hands land on his cheeks and she tries to force him to look at her. Spike twists his head, the only way out is to rest it on her shoulders.

"Oh, Spike, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you guys have broken up. Let's sit down here, let me hold you."

It's too hard to say no or disentangle himself from her insistent pity. She pulls him down on the sofa next to her and strokes his back, talking and talking.

"It must be so hard, especially now. Things do get better eventually, and then you'll be able to move on. And anyway, it was never your child, was it?"

Spike can't believe his ears.

"Shut the fuck up, Dawn," he says. His voice is back and it's only a little hoarse. "We're not talking about that. We're talking about getting into my house and talking some sense into Buffy."

"But Spike," Dawn says, still in that gentle, meant-to-be-calming voice, "if you just talked to Buffy and it didn't help, why would things be different if you tried again so soon?"

Spike doesn't want to tell Dawn about his utter humiliation outside his own front door at all, but he has to say something. "Buffy's changed the lock and disinvited me. There's another Spike in there with her, a crazy zombie Spike who…" Fuck it, he's crying. He tries to suppress the heaving and the sobbing but it won't stop. There is no time for this rubbish, he needs to plan.

Dawn strokes his hair and his neck, which reminds him too much of Buffy doing that. "What do you mean? How can there be another Spike?"

Spike attempts to explain it clearly and patiently. "You saw the other Spike in Cleveland, didn't you, ten years ago? The one Buffy drove up with from Sunnydale? He's back, or some other Spike is, I dunno."

"Yeah, I remember. So, Buffy's back with him? I always thought there was something pretty powerful there. Did Dru dump him again?"

Spike resists the temptation to wring Dawn's neck while shrieking hysterically like an old-fashioned tea kettle. "I don't know! It doesn't matter! I can't let him do that to her. We have to save her and the baby!"

Dawn gazes deep into his eyes and kisses his nose. "Shh, Spike, shh. I know this is hard. Really, I do. I know rejection hurts. Let me make it better for you."

Spike wrenches loose and ejects himself from the clingy grip of the soft couch. He misjudges his take-off and almost bounces off the wall. He has to stay calm and make her understand it's not like that.

"Dawn. I want you to go to Buffy's and talk to her about re-issuing my invite. And be careful, really careful. We can't know what this Spike is thinking, or what he will do to you."

Dawn rises too and is advancing on him again. Her robe has fallen open and shows a tiny gauzy baby doll, a weird choice of nightwear in March, or maybe it is April by now. Her breasts sway softly and her eyes are dark and inviting.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to barge in on them in the middle of the night, don't you think, Spike? They'd either be asleep or, you know…."

Her hands on his waist are so warm and her thumbs stroke up and down on his hipbones. This is so wrong. Spike backs off from the insanity. He can't deal with it now.

"That's a good idea, Dawn, you go by daylight. Buffy will be awake and the vampire might be sleeping, or less active. We can ask Willow about the invite stuff. Good plan. Good night."

He bolts into the guestroom, closes the door behind him and throws himself on the bed. He hopes she won't follow. It's silent outside the door and gradually he relaxes a little. Is Dawn right? Should he just accept that Buffy has moved on and get on with his own life? The face and breasts of the young Slayer he met last night rise unbidden in his mind, closely followed by Dawn's lilac gauze nightie. There would be plenty of opportunities for moving on, so much is clear. But he doesn’t want to. He wants Buffy, and their baby, he wants to take them back to Florence and never meet another Scooby again. There's always trouble when Buffy's old friends or family are in the picture. Always.

Willow's the one who gave Buffy the opportunity to shop around in other dimensions. He could just about kill her for meddling in his relationship, again. Well, not exactly again. It's just that last time when they were living in London, after the disaster that was Syria, Buffy seemed to spend more time with Willow, gossiping and shopping, than she did with him. Buffy had had a hard time of it in a country where a Western woman could still not walk around safely by day. Not that Buffy would have been in any danger, but kicking Syrian butt left and right would have sort of blown their cover. She compensated for this lack of freedom with frenzied hunting and killing by night. Frenzied killing led to frantic post-killing sex, of course, but there was always this edge of desperation about it that reminded him of bad times. Buffy's not good with limitations, with ordinary life, but she always rises to the occasion in a crisis.

He’s back to the present all right. A crisis would be now, wouldn’t it? Why would she act like that? He can’t get over it. His mind keeps doing replays of the scene in the hallway until the tape turns gray. The thick purple cock sliding in and out of Buffy, Buffy's frighteningly blank face. Does he look like that while he has sex with her? She bloody well used to look different, ecstatic, even.

Bloody Dawn with her insinuations, bloody Willow with her magical meddling. They should have stayed in Florence. Okay, gossiping and buying unnecessary dresses isn’t exactly meddling, and he’d been half out of

his mind himself during that particular London sojourn. Spike turns over and pushes his face into the pillow, cringing at the memory of going crazy over a younger student Dawn, who’d been temporarily living with them at the time. Dawn had been going through a period of intense discovering of her sexuality. She’d been on the pull all the time and going through boyfriends at a rate of two or three a week. She’d be out all nights, barely clad, painted and perfumed, glittering when she left, sweaty, tousled, and smelling of sex when she returned.

It must have been a vampire kind of midlife crisis, he supposed, his mad lusting after Dawn, his endless lonely wanking over his mental picture of her. Christ, he doesn’t need to remember this now. It’s in the past. Still. What if he’d tried to get it on with Dawn then, instead of hiding himself away from everybody? Everything would be different. Not necessarily better, though. Funny how two people can be attracted to each other but never at the same time. Thankfully all that went away when they went off to Tibet, never to be remembered again until now.

He likes the life he and Buffy have made, traveling, slaying, teaching and researching. He thought Buffy did, too, but now she’s locked him out of her life. Does she even know how to do a disinvite spell herself? She has no magic. Willow might have a solution to that problem. If Dawn won’t cooperate, he’ll go ask her himself.

*

The vampire rolls off her and starts to snore. Buffy thinks of him as the vampire, so she’ll never confuse him in her mind with her own Spike. His limbs twitch like a dog dreaming of chasing cats and his eyeballs circle endlessly behind their translucent lids. Finally, he relaxes even more and Buffy feels the heavy hand of his will on her slacken. She inches off the bed and waddles silently and swiftly to the bathroom. Buffy the duck.

The highest priority taken care of, she hurries to the kitchen and downs glass after glass of water. Her hands look strange and claw-like, the flesh sunken between raised tendons and veins. She eats the last apple, a soft and wrinkly one she’d have passed up on any other moment, and drinks cold soup straight from the can. Time is a major concern; he might be ready for her again in as little as five minutes. She stares at the phone for a second but moves to the bathroom again. She’s already left phone messages with everyone she can think of. Spike’s cell rang uselessly in the bedroom the first time she tried, waking the vampire and earning her a second round of abuse that day.

Buffy hasn’t pieced his story together completely, but then she thinks he doesn’t remember all of it himself. She knows that he set off from his pathetic shack to find her, which is an incredibly stupid idea, but of course, it’s something someone who was once Spike would do. She’d kind of expect no less from her own Spike. Then he was vamped, check. Whether his weird zombie condition was caused by the kind of vamps, the dwindling magic in his world or something else, she doesn’t know. Buffy also doesn’t know if the vampire himself gets how out of it he is, or that he's definitely getting worse. His mind seems a blank on how he traveled to this world, to London, but she has some ideas on that one.

She undresses, planning to shower and wash her hair, but this weak logy feeling tingles through her limbs. She turns languidly, moving as if under water and glides back to the bedroom. It hurts her back and pelvis to walk like that, but it’s how the vampire thinks she should move, floating on tiptoe like the Sugar Fairy. His mind must be like a sugar cone, mostly empty air, and the rest sickeningly sweet stuff that sticks to your teeth and leaves you as hungry as before.

Halfway to the bedroom she’s allowed to slump again. He didn’t really wake after all. She picks up her silk robe, greasy and limp like her hair, but it’s pretty warm and easily slipped on. She opens the front door a tiny crack. Someone human might want to get in, Dawn or Giles, Andrew maybe. They all know she and Spike are in London and they all said they’d visit. She wishes they would hurry up already.

Buffy puts her lips very close to the barrier, which she can’t touch without waking the vampire, and whispers into the empty corridor.

“I invite you in, Spike. You are always welcome in my house. I love you.”

It won’t work. She knows this because it’s not the first time she’s tried, and Spike still couldn’t get in. The invite must be face to face, she guesses. She wanted to fade into the carpet when she opened the door for him a few hours ago and saw the hopeful look on his face, the roses in his hands, his hair still wet from a shower. What does he think of her now? His staying away for so long made her fear the worst, that he’d left her and wasn’t coming back, like guys do with her. Her heart twanged like a broken string from happiness and fear when he showed up, but she could never have imagined what the vampire did next. Spike will never forgive her for that, even if he realizes later that she was made to do it. Knowing you had sex with another man is not the same as actually seeing it happen.

Buffy walks up and down her living room, wary of trying for the shower again. Exercise is more important than being clean, anyway. She should be grateful his hold on her has been so light the last days. In the beginning, he kept her so completely under his thumb that days passed without her being aware of it. She finally got through to him that she needed food and sleep if she and the baby were to survive. If she wasn’t the slayer she would be dead already, she’s sure of that. She doesn’t dwell on the baby’s condition too long. It still kicks, which is a good sign, isn’t it? Crying and getting even more scared than she is now won’t get her anywhere. She has to think harder. Is there anything she’s left undone? Telephone, tapping SOS on the heating pipes, writing help on a fogged window. Maybe she should have watched more thrillers.

Will Spike try to rescue her? She really needs rescuing. Time is getting short. The vampire thinks he loves her obsessively, but vampire love is a twisted and stunted thing, feeding on hate and resentment. Once she’s had the baby he might kill her, in fact he probably will, whether he means to or not. And he’s fixating on the baby more and more. And she asks herself, what do vampires do to babies? Nothing good comes to mind.

She’s tired and sits down next to her stack of birthing books. She picks up ‘The New Contented Little Baby Book’. She’s left off reading it so far from a superstitious fear of jinxing the birth. She might as well, because how much worse could it get? She puts it down again. Things can always get worse, even if you can’t imagine how. 'New Pregnancy and Childbirth’ then? She settles down with ‘Birthing from Within’.

She wakes up with pages 2 and 3 over her face. Time to return. The book falls down and she steps on it, unable to prevent this through the urgency of the vampire’s wishing. His will pulls her forth with an iron chain around her neck, choking her if she resists. He’s still asleep when she enters the bedroom, but she knows from experience it’s easier to reassure him immediately with her scent and touch, even in his sleep. She gets more precious moments of peace like this than if she stays away a few extra seconds and makes him anxious.

She lies down next to him. He’s curled up in a tight ball, facing away from her. He almost looks like Spike from that angle, the good angle. Only a little tear in his ear, a mottled lump on the jaw and a quarter inch of gray-brown hair showing. She strokes the curls softly. He sighs and stretches out a little, turning towards her warmth like a flower to the sun, a very sad and withered one. Once, not so long ago, he was a good man. A man so good, so heroic, he was given the reward of returned humanity. And now he’s become a monster again on her behalf, a pathetic broken monster who can’t even fight and kill, who has to reach and strain to find emotions and images in his brain, and who more and more often comes up with the wrong ones. He’s getting worse by the day, and even her Slayer blood doesn’t restore him to full capacity any more. The saddest thing is that he knows this on some level. Poor guy. She can actually pity him a little bit, when he’s asleep like this. Any other time his behavior doesn’t leave too much room for pity.

She tries to shift to a more comfortable position and retrieves the offending lump from under her spine. It’s the book the vampire's been reading, ‘The Birth Partner: Everything You Need to Know to Help a Woman through Childbirth’. Tears prick in her eyes. That’s just great.

Chapter 5

Dawn has only just taken off her robe when the door is thrown open with a bang and Spike strides into the room, making it small and bland by his presence. He hauls Dawn against his cold hard body without speaking and kisses her roughly. His tongue thrusts masterfully inside her and she opens up to the deep hot kiss without demur, melting in his arms. Spike growls low in his throat and in a practiced movement rips open her flimsy nightie one-handedly. He throws Dawn backwards on the bed and crawls over to her with slow sinuous movements, like a big powerful cat. A shiver starts up deep in her belly.

"Take off my pants, bitch," he commands her and she obeys with shaking hands, low heat churning inside her, speechless with lust and fear. She fumbles with the buttons of his fly as the stiff denim strains with the pressure of the big member hidden behind it. Finally, it springs out and slams against his muscled belly. It’s so big and scary. Boyfriends have not prepared her for the existence of Spike’s cock.

Spike pushes her head down. "Suck my dick," he says, and again she has no choice but to comply. The bare red head is thick and smooth, almost impossible to get her mouth around and she gags. Spike shoves a few fingers in her pussy and meets only slippery wetness. Dawn comes violently after three such thrusts and he shoves her off his hand.

"Open up," he says and Dawn opens her legs wide.

Spike grabs them and clamps them against his chest. He rams inside her and she squeals in pains and pleasure.

"You deserve it, you little slut," he growls.

Dawn moans and tosses her shiny head. Spike kneads her breasts and twists her nipples, all the time thrusting in hard and fast. Dawn comes again, moaning helplessly.

"Spike, I love you,” she says.

"Aaaargh!" Spike shouts and slumps down on her after a last deep thrust.

He hides his head in her neck and bites hard. “Love you so much, Dawnie," he grunts between clenched bloody teeth and bites down again.

Dawn throws off the covers, sweaty, her heart pounding, and withdraws a shaky hand from between her legs. Wow. That was hot. But also kind of scary. She hadn’t realized that she actually wanted to be bitten by Spike. The dialogue was lame, too. Maybe she should go for something a little gentler, like the dreams she used to have when she was younger.

The moonlight softly touches the Egyptian cotton bedding and caresses Dawn's shiny hair, lying in a prefect half circle behind her head. A soft knock sounds on the door and it opens seemingly by itself. Who could it possibly be? Not…A graceful form drifts into the room, his nose, cheekbones and hands high-lighted by the silvery moon, the rest of him in relative shadow. Spike stops and catches his breath, probably in awe at her radiance, displayed so invitingly before him.

"Dawn," he sighs.

He takes another hesitant step and Dawn can feast her eyes on his beauty. He's dressed in nothing but clean, well-pressed blue jeans, top button undone, and his bare chest and arms seem to glow in the eerie lambency.

He kneels down at the bedside and takes her slender hand into his big ones. "My darling Dawn, I love you so much. Will we finally be together?"

Dawn's heart thuds heavily with expectation. She can't speak, just nods and rubs her thumb on his wrist. Spike bends forward and places a soft, reverent kiss on her lips. The taste of him is sweeter than honey yet burns a languid path to all her limbs. She floats on clouds of love and when they slide together as if by magic, not in the least hindered by clothes, he completes her by filling her up to the core. They sigh in perfect unison and when they climax simultaneously, the earth moves.

Dawn turns over irritably and stomps her pillow back into shape. That’s not it either. The first scenario was too rough, the second one way too schmoopy. When she has her period she devours bodice rippers where sex is couched in terms like that, and they’re very comforting when you're feeling low, but as a grown up woman of twenty-eight she needs a little more oomph than that. Maybe she ought to go for realism.

Dawn is alerted by the sound of muffled sobbing. It's the middle of the night, or early morning maybe. At first, she doesn't want to know about his grief for her sister, as guilty as she feels about the ignored phone message. Buffy looked so desperate. She'd prefer him to be angry at Buffy, but she can't not hear the low desperate sounds. It's worse somehow when it’s a grown man crying. She tosses and turns and finally decides to go see if he's all right. She changes her flimsy silk nightie for soft, much-washed old pajamas . She refuses to think about why she does that.

Her cheeks are hot and she checks out her reflection. Winter pale, no make-up, but her eyes sparkle and her skin is flushed. It'll do. She considers brushing her teeth but decides that would be too obvious. She walks into the guestroom on silent bare feet and stands mesmerized on the doorstep. A beam of light, from the moon or a street lamp, she can't tell, illuminates the naked back of the man in the bed. He's lying there curled in on himself, his hands clapped before his mouth and eyes, giving in to private sorrow. His back is pale, the muscles marked in startling relief by the wash of bluish light, like one of those martyrs in Renaissance paintings. The sheet covers his lower body and she can just see the swell of his buttocks.

The rush of arousal she feels is so heady she has to steady herself again the doorjamb. There is no reaction from Spike. Buffy always said he could smell her at a hundred yards, and gauge her mood by her breathing and her heartbeat. He must know she's here, or is his grief insulating him from that information? She puts her

hand on her heart to calm herself down. The palm of her hand brushes against her nipple and a bolt of heat shoots to her groin.

The thought of touching Spike makes her dizzy. She imagines herself stretched out under him, undulating, irresistible. He will finally see her as a woman. He'll be helpless before her; he'll love her like he should. He’s been the yardstick every boyfriend has been measured against, and none of them made the grade. Now is the time to go for the real thing.

Dawn is absolutely sure that if she goes to the bed and consoles him they will have sex together. Spike won’t be able to resist her now. Is that what she wants? Right now, sure, but she wants more. She wants all of him, for him to leave Buffy and be all hers. If she breaks through his defenses this very night, will they be able to look each other in the eye tomorrow?

Spike makes a tiny surprised sound and turns over. His hands rest behind him on the bed, supporting his reclining torso. He looks up to Dawn with his face tear-streaked and his mouth soft and slack. He makes an even more gorgeous picture like that, all taut abs and straining arms, his cock just barely defined under the thin sheet. The Savior on the Cross, or St. Christopher maybe. They usually draw them real skinny.

Spike remains absolutely still and stares at Dawn. She has to decide now, walk away or go forward to the bed. There is no middle option. Still, perversely, she tries for one.

"You all right?" she asks.

The sound of her owns voice surprises and shocks her, low and full of yearning.

"No," Spike says and turns away again.

It's her choice; she goes to him.

She lays her body flush against his back and her face in his hair.

"Shh, Spike, shh, it'll be alright, things will be better in the morning, shh, I've got you…" she croons softly. For once, she's the mature, caring one, and he the lost child, and it makes her feel very powerful and womanly.

She strokes his arms slowly and rhythmically, trying to soothe him with the warmth of her body and the low wordless sounds she makes. At first, he's taut as a bow under her ministering hands, but slowly he relaxes against her, breathing out with deep shuddering sighs. When he's calm and loose under her tiring fingers, leaning heavily against her, she turns him over and pulls his head into her neck, still stroking his back in that hypnotizing rhythm, pretending that his every touch and breath don't make her tingle and ache inside. Through the thin sheet, she feels him growing against her, and her heart grows with it. Almost there, she's almost got him.

Spike lifts his head and opens his mouth to say something to her, she doesn't know what, but she'll never know because she swoops down and kisses him hard. His hands clamp on her arms and he moves against her once, jerkily, and then he kisses back just as hard. Triumph bursts open inside Dawn like an orgasm. She lifts up her knees and guides his cock inside her. It's hard as rock and she's never ever felt anything like it in her whole life, so hard, so big, she's proud she's more than ready for him; she receives him all the way in one thrust. Spike moans, his face twisted and torn. Dawn rises above him, pins his arms down and tries to ride him in what she imagines is a hard vampiric rhythm.

"Let it happen, Spike, just let it happen, let me do the work, it's alright, you deserve it, let me make you happy…"

Spike lift up his hands, as in defense. Dawn thrusts her breasts in the big palms while she writhes over him and he closes his eyes and lets his head fall to one side in ecstasy.

His face twists and his breathing grows labored, like hers, and it's hard to maintain the rhythm that long, her thighs ache and sweat drips down between her breasts but she has to be the one, she has to make him happy.

"Let it go, Spike," she pants, "it's all for you, all yours, take me, use me, I'm yours."

Spike orgasms with a desperate groan, which twists his beautiful face into a gargoyle countenance, shuddering and crunching down hard. Dawn flops down on him, exhausted, victorious.

She tries to kiss him again but he turns his head away and hides his eyes behind his hand. Dawn guides his hand to her pussy. She's not finished yet. There ought to be some reciprocation, right?

"Spike. Come on, it's your turn now."

Spike lifts his hand and stares at her in disbelief. "What? Dawn, I can't…let's not…"

He rolls her off him and gets out of bed, nearly falling when his legs entangle in the bedsheets. “I'm sorry. This is a mistake. Sorry. I've got to…sorry."

He grabs his clothes hastily, clumsily, and flees. The front door slams closed and she can hear his footsteps rattling down the stairs in the silent night. Shit.

Dawn lies in the sticky rumpled bed. Triumph turns cold as ice as the traces of come on her skin cool down. It wasn't cold, his seed, nor was his body. She chews on the cuticle of her thumb. She can't believe this. This is not how it should have gone. This was supposed to be the beginning of the Spike and Dawn show. He should have made love to her as if he meant it. How can he do this to her?

She starts to cry unrestrainedly, harsh ugly sounds she resents making. She's glad he isn't here, she'd be ashamed if anyone heard her bawl like that. She can't even call anyone. She'll come off so badly if she tells this to anyone, seducing her sister's husband while he was looking to her for support and comfort. They're going to think she's some kind of psychotic scheming bimbo, if she explains how sure she was that sleeping with her would make him fall in love with her.

How can she tell this story so that she'll get some sympathy? She cries harder. There is no way to tell it where she'd come off as acting righteously. She shouldn't have, in any circumstances. She can’t ever tell anyone, because everyone would side with Buffy and Spike and say she was a nasty bitch to seduce a man out of his mind with grief. It'll have to be her secret.

She gets out of the bed and starts to strip off the sheets. Hide the evidence. Destroy the evidence. She turns on the washing machine and hesitates before she turns on the shower. The scent of his skin and seed is still all over her and she hates to wash it off. It'll be as if it never happened, because even if it turned out wrong, this was the stuff of her dreams and she can treasure it in a deep corner of her mind. She relives the few minutes of absolute bliss she felt and she manages to bring herself off on the memory. It's very sad, to stand there in her borrowed shower cubicle in the middle of the night with her fingers up her pussy. It's not fair. She's the better sister.

Now Spike will have even more incentive to go rescue Buffy. Who knows, if she'd have let well enough alone, if events could have run their natural course…For the second time tonight she has cause to dislike herself. Yeah, what is the natural cause of events? For Buffy not to be there. She's not that bad a sister; she doesn't actually wish her dead. Just gone. Dawn turns on the shower so her tears won't irritate her swollen face any further and vows to prove to herself that she's not the girl she seems this night. She'll do everything she can to rescue Buffy. No one will be able to point the finger at her and say she didn't love her sister. She does and she'll show them.

Dawn rolls out of her unpleasantly rumpled bed and walks to the bathroom. She douses her face with ice cold water, never a problem in London. Her face is blotched and red from crying. Is this a childish thing to do, living all these vivid scenarios of things she’s never ever going to do? She’s cried like this over imaginary accidents her imaginary children had, which is utterly silly in a way and she’s never told anyone about them, only the real Tara once. It helps her make her mind up. She’d better get some sleep, she’s supposed to show up for a work introduction tomorrow. She’s going to put away these hopeless dreams of Spike and love.

When she passes Spike’s door on her way back to the bedroom, fully intending to go back to sleep, she halt and knocks on his door. Her heart is a frightened hamster on a wheel, rattling around in her rib-cage. What the hell is she going to say?

There’s a kind of grunt from the room and she walks in. Spike’s awake. He’s leaning with his forehead against the window pane, deep in conversation with the bare branches that tap the window pane. He’s only half clad, but Dawn tries to look away from hiss exposed back.

“Spike?” she begins.

“Yeah, what is it?” Spike says. He sounds exhausted and hoarse.

Dawn doesn't really know what she wants to say. 'Spike, throw me on the bed and ravish me senseless' will most likely not have the desired effect. She goes over to him and her hand hovers over his arm.

"I…"

Spike sighs irritably. "Not now, Dawn."

He grabs her upper arm between his thumb and forefinger and marches her back to the door. "Get some sleep, will you?"

He turns away and goes back to his moody pose by the window. The rain must be fascinating him. There's no moonlight glow on marble abs, his cock is just this limp thing curled up between his legs, he doesn't look her in the eye. No churning heat, dammit.

"Be a good girl and shove off," Spike says without looking up again.

Dawn shoves. She strips of her useless sexy nightie and shrugs into her comfy old jammies. Talk about humiliating. Still, didn't Spike protest a little too much? She'll have to approach him more subtly.

*

Spike crouches across the street from Council House, covered in a borrowed blanket of a putrescent purple. The building is a symbol of the resurgence of Council Power, led by the improbable American director W. Rosenberg. King Charles would be hard put to despise the architecture, rigidly formed to classic strictures, but nevertheless it exudes modernism and efficiency.

Spike waits patiently, high above the crowds behind his chimney stack. There isn’t much of interest to see and his thoughts continually drift back to Buffy, her face so flat and empty of feeling, kneeling above her thin corded hands. He endlessly checks and rechecks the details in his memory, to see if there’s a clue he’s missed, a signal from her he’s overlooked. He closes his eyes to do the same for the scent picture. The overtones carry the alien scent of the other Spike, a completely new and unknown odor, the same briny rotting kelp smell that hung in the stairway of the house. If you take away sight, that smell signature is not the same as the one he remembers from the alternate Spike he met ten years ago. It must some kind of leprosy or curse that makes him so weird and off. Positively feeble-minded, in fact. Of course he thought the other Spike was a mindless idiot before, too, but there’s a whole different vibe to his present idiocy; his thought processes seem of another order altogether.

Now Buffy’s scent. Spike frowns blindly. That’s odd. It’s all Buffy he smells, fairly ripe unwashed Buffy, not a trace of shampoo or toothpaste. A definite clue, because Buffy is a typical modern day American woman, overly fond of washing and deodorizing, in Spike’s opinion. If she’d foregone that strict regimen, there must be duress. He knew it. Buffy wouldn’t just consent to a public display of brutal sex, he knew something was off. Spike sags with his forehead against the strangely sootless chimney-post. No, he wasn’t sure something was up with Buffy. He hoped there was, but he wasn’t sure until now. Buffy truly is a prisoner, and he’ll save her and kill the interloper.

He snuck out of Dawn’s flat early this morning when it was till dark, not having slept much at all. Nightmare images of Buffy kept replaying behind his eyelids when he tried to sleep, and even worse, they were mixed up with lustful dreams of Dawn. Enough to make any sensible man prefer to be awake, and get the hell away.

Spike wishes he could think of a way to sneak into his house – although it belongs to Buffy alone, according to the laws of magic - without a human helper. He’s probably going to need Dawn, more’s the pity. There’s still some hope that Willow will be able to come up with something useful to bypass the magic law that says only Buffy can invite him in, because clearly Buffy won’t be able to help him.

He’s responsible for Buffy now, and it’s different from when there just were the two of them, when Buffy carried her own weight. Spike is abruptly aware that eternal youth, and the insouciance that goes with it, are something else that he’s given up by getting the soul and living with Buffy. She's growing older in that way human beings have, with fits and starts, yielding to the natural rhythms of her body, which tell her it's time to settle down and breed, and he must follow. Spike doesn’t want to be evil again, or not that often, but the thought of returning to the heady free space of vampire existence is tempting. He could skip from Slayer to Slayer, finding a new one when the old one grows sedate and broody, and so avoid the deeply unnatural rituals of adulthood. He sighs. Of course he won’t.

When the morning influx of people into the grand building has ceased, Spike slips down from his high vantage point and crosses the street. His blanket and umbrella provoke no special attention; this corner of the city is used to strange visitors. Spike hesitates and then steps over the threshold of the Council building. No alarm bells start ringing, no guards with crosses and stakes rush forward. Willow and her people may suspect him of multiple murders, but they haven’t warded their offices against him. Yet. He stuffs the blanket in his briefcase.

He makes a beeline for the school wing. The entrance hall gleams confidently with the superiority of real marble, and it’s only after several corridors have imperceptibly lowered the standard for wall- adornment that the visitor descends into vomit green lino and shiny ochre paint, obviously undisturbed by the hands of any kind of designer for decades. This is the Council Academy for Equal Opportunity Advancement, also known as the Slayer School.

He doesn’t want to make an official appointment with Willow; her secretary might fob him off on one of the supercilious flunkeys or waste his time in other ways. He’s planning on getting to Willow’s top floor office by way of some connected roofs. It’s risky to do this in daylight but the blanket that makes his briefcase bulge will help with that.

Spike hurries through the corridors, satisfied about his timing; all the Slayers, young Potentials and their teachers are in the classrooms by now. He throws a quick look over his shoulder before taking a right into the stairwell and cannons straight into the tall buxom figure of the young Slayer he’d met a few nights ago. At some point in the past few weeks, anyway; he’s no longer sure of time. Her face brightens and she stands very close to him.

“Spike! Have you come to look for me?”

Spike winces and changes it halfway into a wink, frantically thinking which way his advantage lies; play along with her, at the risk of being unable to shake her off; or get rid of her and have her turn on him and make trouble.

He decides to do both. “Maybe,” he drawls, and looks her up and down. “Maybe not.”

She flushes and tosses her hair. Spike puts his hand on her thin shoulder. “So,” he says softly. “I’m on a secret mission. Nobody can know I‘m here. I have important news for Director Rosenberg, but I have to get to her without anyone seeing me. There may be a traitor in the ranks!”

Is she young and gullible enough to fall for this? Oh yeah, her eyes grow big and she nods along with his words. She flushes and her heart skips and hops. Of course, it could be his physical presence, putting her Slayer system at DefCon 3 automatically.

She grabs his hands. “Come on, I know a way to get there. I used to sneak out that way when I was a kid.”

“What’s your name?“ he breathes into her ear while they race to the third floor hand in hand.

“Meena,” she says.

Spike feels like a boy playing truant as they silently weave through the warren of corridors which make up the upper floor of this wing. It used to be like that with Dawn, running off, giddy and giggling together after escaping the scrutiny of the grown-ups, be it Buffy or Giles. The soul has made him one of the adults himself. At moments like this, he regrets it briefly, the loss of that freedom and innocence. Carrying the soul around is sometimes a depressing burden.

Meena gets him up to the roof and helps him with his blanket. She manages to give him a quick kiss before she pulls him out into the drizzle, and Spike could kick himself. Her lips taste of strawberry gloss and she smells of ginger and lime, a fresh sharp scent, as bracing and seductive as taking a dive in the breakers at Blackpool. Sun and yellow sand would lull you into thinking that the sea would be mild too, but instead it tumbled you over, laughing at you, filling your nose with cold briny foam.

Spike avoids another attempted smooch from Meena and dances away into the next corridor. He’s sorry he involved her at all. Better to shake her off, hurt feelings or no, than the sense of entitlement she’s bound to get from all this. They traverse a corridor and exit on another roof. Behind the glamorous new façade, Council Hall is made up from several old buildings joined together to form a maze of stairways and halls. Meena knows her way about even better than Spike; three chimney stacks down they take a left and hide behind a

small rooftop building of unknown purpose. Meena points his head toward the big windows on the right and Spike recognizes Willows big sunny office behind them.

He burrows deeper into his faintly smoking blanket, feeling like Little Purple Riding Hood sneaking up on grandmother, or however the plot of the long forgotten fairy tale went. He flattens himself against the wall framing the windows and peers in. If Willow’s alone he’ll tap on the pane and ask to be let in.

The first thing his eye falls on is Bert, leaning forward over Willow’s rosewood desk, with his hand stretched out and an ingratiating smile on his face. Willow’s white, heavily ringed hand moves into Spike’s field of vision and deposits a slew of high denomination Euro bills into Bert’s lavender-blue paw. Spike whips his head back and leans against the wall, trying to fit this new oddly shaped fact into the puzzle of last week’s happenings. He can safely assume, he feels, that Bert’s guest appearance in his life was no coincidence. Bert’s most likely the very bloke who slipped him a doctored drink and kept him out of the loop for weeks, isn’t he?

Meena waves at him from behind her chimney-stack, probably wondering why he isn’t going in yet. Spike looks at her with awakening suspicion. Was she sent to look for him, too, to delay him and seduce him for God knows what purpose?

He decides he can’t let Willow know he observed her with the perfidious Bert and crawls back to Meena.

“Why aren’t you going in?” she asks.

“Change of plan,” Spike says curtly. “Can you take me to her office via the usual entrance?”

“No problem. You’ll have to get past Shirley on your own, though,“ Meena says doubtfully.

“Leave Shirley to me,” Spike says with a wink. Some of his suspicion leaves him when he registers the changes in her skin temperature, heart rate and saliva production the wink generates. Nobody could fake those.

Meena backtracks most of their circuitous route and they’re back in the school. As luck would have it, by now classes are changing and Spike is a rock amidst surging waves of Slayers and Potentials, many of whom recognize him and greet him boldly or shyly, according to their natures. Meena has sidled up to him closely, claiming him publicly as her prize, and Spike guesses she’s counting on getting plenty of status points from his appearance at her side. The miasma of churning teenage hormones is pretty potent and Spike tries to stand taller to get his nose free of its beckoning depths. He so needs to get some, and not from teenaged tarts or manipulative sisters in law, but from his own beloved Slayer. He’s going to kill dastardly Bert, very slowly.

The sea of girls parts with a rush of squeaks and whispers and he realizes he’s been growling with bared teeth and clenched fists.

“Thanks, Meena,“ he says and escapes her needy gaze by throwing himself into an undertow of girls going down and to the left. They vanish behind olive green classroom doors and Spike doubles back to the now empty stairwell. He crosses over to the main building via a short stretch of roof and lands on glossily buffed oak parquet. He turns the corner to brave the lair of Shirley, Willow’s guardian dragon.

She sits behind her modest desk, incased in steel beneath her flowered silk frock, of a cut made familiar by several generations of Windsors. She’s built on a more massive scale than that diminutive family, and is made even more imposing by the stiff shiny waves of an old-fashioned permed hairdo; copied from a certain former PM, Spike suspects.

“Shirley!” he beams. “How’s my best girl?”

He bends over her desk to look deep into her eyes, avoiding the sight of her crepey décolleté, and kisses her plump shiny hands, which are bigger than his and laden with enough carbunculous rings to serve as knuckledusters.

Spike prolongs the smile he’s aiming at her suspicious eyes, still holding on to her hands, hoping that enough time has passed for Bert to leave.

“Could you possibly get me five minutes with Ms. Rosenberg, Shirl? I need a quick word with her, and I just know you can swing it…”

Shirley’s hand creeps up to pat her lacquered waves. “I couldn’t, Spike, not even for you.”

Spike squeezes her other hand. ”Pretty please?”

Shirley withdraws her hand reluctantly and plays nervously with a perfectly sharpened no. 2 pencil.

Spike leans forwards onto his fists, making sure his biceps bulge and the veins on his forearms stand out, hoping that she isn’t planning on slamming the pencil into his heart. Shirley’s gaze skitters over him, landing briefly on his face, his arms and his jeans.

“Alright then, in you go. Make it quick, she’s very busy today. She’s just come back from her trip.”

“Trip where, Shirl?” Spike says, halfway to the door already.

“America, Tennessee somewhere.”

The destination conveys no useful information to Spike. He slips inside and coughs to alert the computer-entranced Willow.

"S-Spike…" Willow stammers as she looks up from her computer screen. "Hey, long time no see. Would you mind making an appointment through my secretary, because I'm really, really busy right now…"

Spike becomes aware that he hasn’t thought up a good reason to talk to her without alerting her to his suspicions. He’ll just start with anger then. He slams his hand on her rosewood desk. “What have you been up to this time, Director Rosenberg? Meddling with the dimensions again?"

Willow reacts more violently than he anticipated. She flushes an unbecoming shade of lilac and pushes her chair back from the desk in an attempt to get away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Spike."

She isn’t a little girl anymore and stubbornly sticks to silence, no matter how hard he glares. He changes tack.

“You’ve been spreading rumors about me, haven’t you? About me killing again!”

Willow relaxes imperceptibly, so minutely only a vampire could notice it. So that’s not it.

“Certainly not. On the contrary, I’ve taken pains to investigate those obviously unfounded reports.”

"What do you mean, investigate? You’ve been spying on me as well?"

"I haven’t, I mean, I commissioned Dawn to look into it."

Dawn? That hurts more than he'd have expected. He shakes his head to clear away the sense of betrayal.

“Well, you can stop investigating right now, because I haven’t been killing people and I don’t intend to. But there’s this other thing. You helped Buffy, didn’t you? Helped her find a human Spike in another dimension? You’re the only one who could have done it."

Willow tenses a little again, but Spike thinks she’s still not at the peak of anxiety she was when he first uttered his unfocused accusation. He can almost see her brain working and spewing out possible lies. “I didn’t… I don’t understand. A human Spike?"

That’s weird.

"Okay. So you don’t know about that. I was so sure it had to be you,” he says easily, covering his dismay.

Willow knows perfectly well Buffy could corroborate this story. Why would she deny it? Is she involved with the arrival of the other Spike who’s with Buffy now? His head aches when he thinks of all the Spikes involved, and what Willow could conceivably want with them. She is up to something, something worth lying about. And if she knows Buffy can’t tattle, she must know that she’s held captive by Spike. The implications are stunning.

“Couldn’t it be that there's another Spike in this world, here in London, and he’s the one who’s killing?" he goes on, desperately stepping into a fog of counter-lies and half-truths, hoping he won’t fall into an unseen abyss.

Willow looks pensive, leaning her thin fingers elegantly against her flawless jaw. Posing. “I’m not sure. Crossing dimensions isn’t that easy. But I do have someone who might help."

She presses a button on her desk phone. "Shirley, could you get me the EWH?"

"What’s the EWH?” Spike asks.

"Emergency Wesley Hologram."

At his unbelieving look, Willow’s face glows up in a blood red flush. “Sorry. Joke. Very lame joke. Won’t use it again."

If she keeps this up his head is going to explode.

"Bloody Hell, Willow, how can you keep using that thing in cold blood, let alone make up horrible names for it? Have you no respect for a fallen warrior? A former Watcher, too?"

"Don’t be silly, Spike, it's just a construct. It can’t really feel."

The secretary brings in an ornately carved ebony box, holding it firmly away from her creaking bosom. Willow opens it with her little gold key and speaks into it slowly and clearly. "Activate EWH."

Spike growls in frustration. A brownish cloud forms above the box and solidifies into the shape of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, former Watcher and beloved mate.

"Emergency Wesley Hologram reporting."

Willow flicks Spike a guilty glance.

"How may I be of assistance?"

Spike fights the twisting ache in his guts. He can’t believe this is not Wesley, however often Willow explains the magic of it. Spike's been a ghost locked up in an amulet, and when he’d get out, he damn well knew time was passing and he had emotions and everything. Poor Wes. Damn Willow. Being Head of Council just isn’t good for her character, power junkie that she is. They've been letting her get away with things too much. Tara, for example. They all understood so well what she felt and why she did it, but privately Spike thinks Tara never should have consented to travel away from her home dimension.

Willow explains the problem to Wesley. She's good, Spike has to admit. Concisely and comprehensively stated. Wesley nods and looks thoughtful. Spike turns away. He just can’t watch this travesty.

He stares out of the window while Willow and Wesley behind him toss sentences back and forth on standalone dimensions, thin timelines, magic ripple effects across universes and so on. His thoughts inevitably drift away to the sharply graven memory of Buffy and the other Spike, her eyes glassy, vacant with pleasure. Her pregnant body marred by bites and bruises, the sight of his own arse bobbing.

"Spike."

He shivers at the familiar measured voice, but he can’t look the thing in the eyes. And then he does, in case it really is Wesley inside, who might feel hurt if his old comrade doesn’t acknowledge him. The ghostly form steeples his hands together gravely.

“I will do a divination to discover if there is another Spike and from what timeline he might have come. Willow will inform you of the results."

Spike almost bounces to the door in his eagerness to be away from this place. A last thought strikes him and he turns back to Willow. "Willow, you'll take care of clearing my name within the Council, won’t you? It must be clear to you now that the allegations were untrue."

Willow gives him one of her opaque looks. He doesn’t trust her when she looks like that, and now he has more reason than ever before. “Of course, Spike," she says.

Chapter 6

Dawn creeps up the stairs to Buffy's apartment. She can't say why she’s being so stealthy. It’s broad daylight; she’ll hardly be in any danger from her sister or the other Spike. Spike's never harmed her before, why would he now? She's the one who always loved him, soul or no soul, chip or no chip. Well, she actually has only a few memories of him without the chip or the soul, both of them consisting of Spike talking to her mother. They're far from scary memories; they’re comforting, actually, reminding her of Joyce and more innocent times.

Strangely enough, the door is open. Dawn hesitates on the threshold. Should she go in? That seems weird; she doesn’t want to intrude on any of the things Buffy and Spike generally get up to. She can’t imagine things being much different even with another Spike.

She dithers until she remembers herself standing in front of another door last night and she tells herself to get a grip. She touches the door with a diffident fingertip and it swings inward soundlessly. She steps over the threshold and enters the flat. The air smells stale and unpleasant, a strange mix of sweet and salty odors. Spike and Buffy sex smells? Yuck.

The door to the kitchen is open and she peeks inside. A stray sunbeam lightens up its rented blandness. The herbs in their little pots on the windowsill are dead, and the counter is heaped high with used crockery. After Mom's death Buffy turned painfully neat, as if proving over and over again she could run a household. This is not like her.

Dawn turns back to the hallway. She hears a strange slow shuffling. "Buffy?"

Her sister enters her line of vision. She looks terrible. Her hair is dying seaweed, her robe splotched with last week’s meals, hanging open over her giant belly. Dawn really didn’t need to see the grossness of that. Her face is sunken and haggard. Her nose seems twice its usual size and you could make tea from the dark bags under her eyes. Her hands are like claws.

"Dawn?" Buffy's voice is a croak. "Run! Get away from here! Get help! Quickly!"

Dawn just gapes, unable to take in what exactly she should she run from. Escaped-from-the-ward Buffy or what? The evil smell?

Buffy's eyes bulge and her mouth works but she's stopped speaking. What the hell is wrong with her? She could be a little more glad to see Dawn if she needs help, right?

A liquid laugh sounds behind her and turns her spine into a column of ice. Now she wants to run, but her body turns towards the menace on its own accord, which she knows from horror movies you should never do. Something in her jacket pocket vibrates and gives off heat. She thought she'd put her cell in her handbag. Oh, wait, it's the locator device Willow gave her, that's remained silent all these weeks. Wow, how useful to know that a Spike is within five feet of her, like she didn’t already know that.

In the doorway to the bedroom stands the weirdest, scariest apparition she’s ever seen. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just another demon; it’s the Spike lookalike bit that gets her. Its fried white poodle hair stands up in uneven tufts over its head; the face is shrunken and discolored and the bones of the nose and cheekbones threaten to pierce the skin, so thin and tight is it over the skull. Its grinning dark blue lips reveal two rows of broken brown teeth and he shows her the horrible slug in his mouth in a very Spike-like smirk.

"Pretty girl,” it burbles.

Dawn steps closer to it, however much she doesn’t want to. Is it forcing her somehow?

The hands it stretches toward Dawn are a horror in themselves. There are fingers missing and white bone is showing. And the smell. A sweet stench of decay, mixed with rotting kelp and dead fish. The awful hand travels up her sleeve, murmuring appreciatively over the soft fabric of her jacket. It shoves her hair aside and rips at the neck of her T-shirt. It comes even closer, sniffing and grunting. Dawn feels something cold and slimy lap at her throat and she screams, but it’s only inside her head. No real sound comes out. She looks at Buffy, who's staring at her with the whites of her eyes showing. Now what? Buffy's supposed to rescue her, she thinks hysterically, not the other way around.

The Spike creature humps his hips against her and she breaks out in goose bumps all over her body. God no, please, no. He continues to lick her neck and Dawn keeps expecting him to bite her, but so far, he hasn't. She's never going to daydream about Spike biting her again.

He lifts his head and his hand strokes her hair. "Still my sweet little Nibblet."

Dawns bursts into tears from relief and fear and hopeless compassion. It really is a Spike. He knows her. She’s safe, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. What has happened to him, poor thing? She grabs his hand and kisses his cheek, determinedly not paying attention to its spongy texture.

"Let me talk to Buffy for a moment, Spike. We're sisters, remember? Sisters talk."

Spike shows her his blackened gums, a distant relative to real smiling, and Dawn almost falls when he releases his hold on her neck. His hand shoots out to her hip and steadies her. It travels down her groin, back to her belly and up to her breasts. He sniffs his hand and his eyes film over. "Pretty girl. Give me babies?"

Okay, not that close to the original, obviously. She doesn’t know if he’s a vampire or a zombie, but he’s in no position to give anyone babies. He's pathetic.

Buffy sinks down on the floor. She gasps and draws in big shuddering breaths. "Awn. Grunt Willow. Elp. Grunt Willow."

Yeah, obviously Willow would be a good choice to call for help now. Jesus. Poor Buffy. How long has he kept her prisoner? Thank God that she's still pregnant. Her mind steers away from imagining what would happen if Buffy did have the baby.

What’s Buffy doing now? Buffy rakes her nails down a crusty wound on her neck. It starts bleeding and the smell hits Spike in an obvious physical way. His head whips around and he shuffles forward, sweeping his head from left to right like a lion scenting his prey. His tongue comes out and licks his lips. Dawn stares in fascination at his back. It’s bluish gray and white strips of rib are showing through. Pieces of meat shake loosely in his buttocks and arms when he walks. He’s disintegrating before her eyes.

He pushes Buffy backwards and opens her legs. His head bends to her neck and Dawn feels the sudden release of his attention like an elastic band snapping back in her face. She bolts without looking back at Buffy and zombie Spike. She can imagine what they’re doing, thank you. She has to find Spike. Call Willow.

She’s crying hysterically and cabs veer away from her as soon as they see her face. It starts raining, icy dirty April rain, drenching her hair and ruining her pretty blue velvet jacket. She finally manages to locate a tube entrance and drags herself home.

She stumbles inside and wrestles with her jacket and her sodden shoes. She starts with a shriek when Spike’s voice says quietly, "Hey Dawn."

The thing in her jacket pocket, supposedly a locator device for Spikes, stays quiet. It means something but she can’t think what. She pushes all memories of last night out of her mind and throws herself on Spike’s chest as if they’re still older brother and younger sister. He recoils slightly but when she just babbles and wrings his shirt, he relents and takes hold of her.

"What the matter, Dawn?" he says resignedly.

He thinks it's just some girly crisis, Dawn can hear it in his voice.

"Spike, I saw Buffy. I saw that other Spike. It’s thrall, Spike, it’s thrall. He enthralled me, and then Buffy saved me, she let him drink from her."

Spike’s face is a study in emotions, first impatience, then mounting anger. His fingers clench on her upper arms becomes so hard she screams briefly.

"Sorry," he says.

Dawn rubs her sore arms. “It’s fine, you can bruise me any time.”

Spike doesn’t seem to take this in the spirit she intended, he looks annoyed, even.

She goes on hastily. “We have to save her, Spike. We have to kill him. He’s killing her. And the baby. She could have gone for the stake while he was enthralling me, I think, but she attracted his attention to save me."

She wishes she wasn’t looking at his face now, because written in large capitals on his forehead it says, 'Buffy should have saved herself, not you'. Yeah, great, that’s a feeling she remembers seeing on everyone’s faces only too well, back when Buffy died. Actually Spike was the only person who didn’t make her feel it. She’s finally managed to drive him away from her camp, she guesses. Isn’t she allowed to love, like everyone else?

Spike flinches at something and runs his hand through his hair. He pushes her aside and jumps up to pace. He'll think of something, he always does. He’ll save Buffy and then…well, she doesn’t know what then.

"We need magic help, Dawn. There's no way we can get in otherwise. Well, you could, but you won’t be able to kill him. Obviously."

He thinks he won’t fall under the thrall? Well, he’s a vampire, he should know about things like that.

"Right,” Dawn says and goes for her handbag. "I’ll call Willow. She’ll know a spell to break through the disinvite barrier."

Spike's hand clamps down on her forearm. Dawn looks at him reproachfully and he relaxes his hold. Great, another bruise. How does Buffy stand all that strength? She hasn’t even heard or seen him approach. Vampire speed is so creepy.

"Not Willow," he says in a dangerously calm voice that makes Dawn curl up and shiver inside. "She's mixed up in this somehow, I'm convinced of that."

Dawn gapes. She hastily shuts her mouth when she catches his eyes on her face. She must look a sight, with her sodden hair and blotchy crying face, just when she wants to look both alluring and capable, like Lara Croft. She checks out her breasts. Close enough, especially now that Angelina was noticeably showing her age in Tomb Raider VI.

"But why can’t I call Willow?" she protests, even while she’s putting down the cell phone in automatic compliance. "Buffy said to call Willow."

Spike frowns and runs his hand through his hair again. It stands up in little contorted spikes now, a bit like the other Spike’s hair, but his is shinier and healthier, and much more attractive. She doesn’t mind the bulging in his biceps when he does that either. Spike catches her look and gives her a glare.

"Did Buffy really say that? What did she say, exactly?"

Dawn thinks hard. "It sounded like 'call Willow', but it was more like grunting. ’Ung Willow'."

"So it might just as well have been, 'not Willow'?"

"Well, yeah, but…why do you think Willow might be mixed up in this? She’s Buffy’s friend!"

Even while she says this, she thinks of her own meeting with Willow a few weeks ago and the ambiguous feeling she had about it. Maybe Willow really isn’t Buffy’s friend anymore. The device. It only reacted to the otherworldly Spike, not to this one.

She fishes it out of her jacket pocket. "Look, Spike, it's silent when it comes near you, but it started to buzz like mad when I was near creepy Spike." A brief shudder of disgust wracks her at the visceral memory of his hands testing the breeding capacity of her body, his slimy tongue tasting her neck. "So Willow must have set it on him, and so she must have known about him. Right?"

"Figures," Spike says slowly. “Someone with magic must have done the disinvite. Buffy couldn’t have done it on her own. I saw the demon that slipped me the Mickey Finn, or whatever, today, leaving her Council office when I went in to see her. Kept me out of the running for a few weeks. Wasn’t sure about it, because why would she, but I said something about her messing around with the dimensions, and she looked guilty as hell. And then she denied that there could be another Spike in London, or this world, without her knowing it. She must have known somehow I couldn’t get Buffy to check her story. I didn’t say I‘d met him, obviously. And she used the Wesley Emergency Hologram again, which always makes me want to wring her neck."

"Ew," Dawn agrees sympathetically, even though she doesn’t harbor tender feelings toward Wesley, or even any feelings besides vague dislike. Not that she ever really met him, but the Monks meticulously inserted even dweeby old Wesley into her memory.

"So, what's the plan, Spike?"

Spike just stands there with his hands on his hips, looking taut and muscled and dangerous, but not particularly full of brilliant ideas. She wants to nudge him and say, come on, Spike, have a plan, be the hero, but she guesses he must be used to taking his lead from Buffy. As if Buffy's ever Idea Girl, even in her best moments. Buffy and Spike are so alike; their ideas form only at the most critical point of a fight, traveling straight from their spines to their hands, without any interference from their brains. Dawn sighs. It's clear which one of them is going to be the Giles in this scenario, and it's not the one with the bulging biceps. She adds black-rimmed glasses, a bun and a clipboard to the Lara Croft picture in her mind. There's no need to let Spike know about her change of role. Let him sweat a bit.

*

Spike looks at his hand. Why does it look like that, with black oozing fingertips on some fingers and white bone on others? It’s lying on an open book. The page has a picture of a tiny baby held in a man’s hands, big, hairy, capable hands, pink and fully fleshed. His hands should look that man’s, useful for picking up an infant like that, crushing its skull and draining it dry in one quick gulp. No, no, he’s thinking it wrong again. That’s what he’s not going to do. Maybe other babies, nothing wrong with drinking those, but not his baby. He turns the book around to remind himself of the title. ‘The Perfect Birth Partner’. Right. He’s going to take care of his very own child like a proper dad. Holding, burping, changing. Nappies and special nappy rash cream.

He has the most disconcerting feeling he ought to know all this already, that he’s read the book before, but he can’t be sure. His memory’s not what it has been. If he practices often, he’ll be able to remember it well enough, he’s sure. He’s going to be the best father in the world. The mother needs lots of support while breastfeeding, which might be hard to start up the first days. Feed her lots of fluids and protein. Which is meat, he knows that. Sausage is meat. Hide the salami.

He grins and fondles his cock. That’s still working all right. He wills Buffy to come over. He’ll give her a good shagging, make her scream. Sometimes she screams really loudly, sobbing and crying, which he hates. He makes her shut up then. But there’s a good kind of screaming. If he’s just had a good feed he can be patient enough to make her scream the good way, when she’s nice and limp and weak. When she gets strong again he has to press down hard on her will to keep it down, and it makes him tired. Tired is cranky. Crank his handle. There she is now.

She shuffles over to the bed and lies down quietly on her side, her skinny bum turned to him. He’d rather fuck her on her back, but there’s a bump in her middle that’s in the way. She shouldn’t eat so much. And also he wishes she looked better and smelled better. He doesn’t know how to will that to happen though, but it is a pity. The shiny bronzy hair and the rosy skin he loves so much are gone. When he thinks of that, it makes him angry. She should make herself pretty for him, shouldn’t she, if she loves him?

His cock has gone soft. He needs a drink first. He bends over Buffy’s neck but decides on her arm instead. All that scar tissue is so unappealing, he wants to make a fresh new bite. He slobbers up a few mouthfuls, but her blood isn’t as nourishing as it used to be. He’s ready to fuck her again, though, and drinking form her makes her nice and smooth inside. He slips in, getting excited by the salty woman smell that rises from her cunt.

That’s the way Dawn smelled. Dawn was just here for a nice visit and she looked and smelled so much nicer than Buffy does now, he almost had a mind to make her the mother of his baby. She smelled as if she could make one, but there wasn’t one almost ready inside her, which is a pity. He’s not sure he can make a new one, although he’s doing a mighty fine job now in making Buffy squeal.

Chapter 7Spike’s pacing Dawn’s tiny living room, revving up, swinging into thinking mode, which lasts a short while and comes right before action mode. His duty is clear. He should have gone along with his gut feelings about the thrall thing right away. If he really trusted Buffy he would have. Although he still couldn’t have gotten in. His train of thought is broken when Dawn plucks at his sleeve.

“What?” he says brusquely.

Dawn flips her hair, which doesn’t work as well as usual, as it’s still dripping London rain, and bites her lower lip. Can she please get on with it?

"We need another witch, Spike. Either we have to lift Buffy's thrall, or we have to disable the disinvite. Who'll help us?"

At last she’s using her brain instead of her hormones, and it’s a considerable one, as he well knows.

"Can't trust anyone in the council, Nibblet," he says thoughtlessly, forgetting he hasn't called her that in years.

Dawn makes a strangled sound. "Nibblet? Is that how you still think of me? As a sexless little girl? Is that why you wouldn't…"

Jesus. Just when he thought he’d headed off any more discussion of her sodding feelings.

“Not now!” he snaps. “I’m busy thinking of a plan, Dawn. Go dry your hair or something.”

Dawn’s composure dissolves. She lifts a wet face with wobbly lips up to him and he’s kissing her before he can decide not to.

“Oh Spike,” Dawn sobs against his lips. “I love you so much, and you didn’t…and now we have to help Buffy, we can't…"

What the hell is he doing? Spike steps back hastily, propping the unsteady Dawn up with one hand and with the other finding a tissue in her handbag.

"Here," he says, his voice shaky. "Blow."

Dawn rubs her face with the tissue and then looks at him, her eyes full of more tears and reproach, but she manages to keep them in. Shit, that was close. He really didn’t mean to kiss her, so why did he end up doing it? He’s flaking out, just when he shouldn’t be distracted from his main purpose. Their working together is such a risky proposition. He loves Dawn like a brother, but he’s always been afraid that the brotherly love only needed a little shove to push it into more. Strangely enough last night didn’t even get close. Dawn stepping into his room in her glaringly transparent nightie was just annoying, not seductive, but she only has to cry at him and he folds. Now he stares at her white face and defensively crossed arms and feels a right tosser for everything, snapping at her, kissing her, not going on with it. Everything he does is wrong.

Dawn turns away from him, rummages in her handbag and comes up with another tissue. She blows her nose hard and looks at him, her eyes full of reproach.

"I need you with me,” Spike says hastily. "I really need your help here, Dawn. We need to rescue your sister. Think. Did the other Spike say anything else? Anything to give us a clue?"

Dawn sniffs. It’s a letting go of decorum that makes her very vulnerable and Spike is even more ashamed of himself, and at the same time more attracted. What's wrong with him? He should be hurrying back to Buffy, not almost falling for Dawn’s wiles. Apart from her lack of maturity and feeble hold on reality, she’s Buffy’s sister, for God’s sake.

"He said something like, hello sweet Nibblet, and I was so relieved, I thought he did know me after all. But then he said stuff about me giving him babies, and it was obvious he was not all there. He’s a vampire, how could he ever give ma a baby? As if I would ever touch him, disgusting dead rotting thing. I don’t understand how Buffy could have been taken in, or why she let him in."

Spike has heard enough. There are so many things in that statement he doesn’t want to think about. Buffy must have had a good reason to let the other Spike in, he’s sure. He’s not going to let him have her, or his baby, or Dawn. They’re all his and his alone.

Dawn steps away from him and he heaves a tiny sigh of relief. She's so warm, so sweet, it would be so easy to try and forget the present miserable circumstances for a few minutes and find some comfort. He can't understand why he's still thinking of this every other minute when he's so perfectly clear on what he wants, namely Buffy and his child. And kill the other Spike, slowly.

"You were saying about the Council?" Dawn says in a brittle voice, trying hard for business like.

"Right." He tosses his cigarette butt and rakes his hands though his hair. "We can't be sure that they haven't all been briefed by Willow, or that they wouldn’t report to her if we asked them to help us. Is there any one of them you know personally?"

Dawn shakes her head. "I'm still in touch with some of the scholarly types, but not with any of the witches. I know there's this big coven in Devon, but I never met any of them."

"We could try and see if Giles and Andrew have contacts?"

"Andrew's still in Oz. I'd rather not get Giles involved in all this again, he’s getting a bit old for this, don’t you think?"

Dawn seeks his eyes, but he refuses to give her the contact, keeping them fixed steadily on his hands.

"Tara?" he proposes hesitantly.

Dawn wrinkles her nose. "Wouldn't she be in on everything Willow does? And I never feel at ease with her anymore. She's always so…flaky."

"She didn't used to be. When Willow brought her over, nine years or so ago, we had some good times. Reminiscing, filling in. I could really talk to her about the soul. But you're right; lately she looks at you as if she hardly knows who you are."

There's a silence. Not as if you can just look up a witch in the phonebook.

"Tara, then. At least she might point us to a friend. Willow’s probably still in the office. I’ll phone first to be sure. "

In the cab, Dawn seats herself as far away from him as she can get and stares outside. Spike tries to do the same, but it’s painful to see her so dejected and alone. Better to run the risk of getting too close than staying safe and far away. He can do this, this is nothing to do with Buffy.

"C'mere," he says gruffly and Dawn lifts a wan face to him. She hesitates and then slides over and crawls under his arm. Tears start sliding down her face. She grips his hand fiercely and stares straight ahead. Spike swallows hard, and pats her soft shoulder. The sheer warmth of human beings never ceases to touch him. All that busy life working away in there, the fire he warms his cold dead hands on, the fire that keeps him anchored in the world. It should be Buffy's, she burns hotter and brighter than any of them, but Dawn can be a substitute to hold him steady. Temporarily.

They wait an unconscionable time for the door of Willow's posh flat to open.

"Y-yes?" Tara stammers after opening the door a tiny crack. "Who’re you?”

“Tara, it’s Dawn.”

“Who? Oh, right. Willow isn't back yet."

Dawn rolls her eyes at Spike. How can Tara have difficulty recognizing her? Is she on medication or something? Willow's never said anything.

"We'd like to talk to you, Tara. Is that all right?"

"Ye-es," Tara says doubtfully. "Come in, I guess."

Spike gets the feeling she doesn't even know he's a vampire. He gets a better look at her when they follow her into the living room. She's heavier than he's ever seen her before. She never was one of those stick-thin girls like Willow or Buffy, but this isn't charmingly curvy, this is just plain overweight. Her dress doesn't quite fit her; she looks pasty and middle-aged. She smells of bad nutrition and despair. Again, the effect of medication?

Tara halts and turns. "Oh. I'm such a bad hostess, I forgot to ask what you'd like. Coffee?"

Her voice. Her voice is so different from the one he remembers. He can hear a distinct southern twang, even if he can't place the exact state it's from. Her hair is frizzy and wavy from a perm growing out, and he's never seen Tara, original or mark 2, with anything but straight hair. She likes to dye it, but never changes the texture. He's speaking before his mind has finished the thought.

"How long have you been here, Tara? When did Willow get you from you own dimension?"

Tara starts guiltily and looks at them with big terrified eyes. "Willow said…Willow said never to tell anyone." She wrings her hands. "I don't know what to do. She's been so kind to me, but I…"

She sinks down on Willow's crimson suede couch and stares at them helplessly. Her purple dress clashes violently with the red.

Dawn gulps from beside him and he can just see that brain of hers making leaps and bounds. She sinks down on the couch beside Tara and stares at him. "My God - Spike. There's been a whole series of Taras over the years. There must have been. I can see it now. The first one was from a dimension where all the events were really close to what happened in ours, but whenever Willow needed a new Tara, she had to start fishing in dimensions further and further away. Oh my God."

Tara on the couch wrings her hands harder and harder. She's leaving red streaks on the pale skin of her plump hands. “Why would she do that? What happened to the other Taras?"

"I think I can guess," Dawn says matter-of-factly. "My bet is that all the Taras kept breaking up with Willow because she abuses magic and personal boundaries. Remember, Spike, before you got the soul?"

Spike sees Tara start at that. "Yeah, I do. You're probably right." He thinks for a moment. "Alright, Tara, why don't you come with us? We can't leave you here for Willow to find. We don't know what happened to your alter ego, and let's hope it's nothing as bad as I'm thinking right now, because we can't take the risk. Are you a witch?"

Tara flushes a brick red. "How did you know?" She sounds frightened.

"Our Tara was a good witch. The one who died a long time ago. And not a demon, if you happened to be worried about that. We need your help. Have you ever met Buffy?"

Tara shakes her head mutely. "Willow told me about her. She's married to a vampire. Umpgh!" She shrieks a ladylike little shriek and tries to disappear into the couch. "That's you! Is that you?"

"Yeah," Spike admits. "But I'm a good vampire, a vampire with a soul."

Dawn pats Tara's arm. "It's okay, Tara. He's safe. He hasn't killed a human being in over ten years."

Tara's hand lies on the solid shelf of her bosom and she pants rapidly. "Really? That's very…comforting."

Dawn gives Spike a quick look. "Tara, why don’t we go pack your things? Spike can wait here. And he's really not scary anymore. He's going to be the father to my little niece or nephew."

Spike grits his teeth and paces up and down nervously on Willow’s pale shag carpet while the women are away. The urge to fly apart at the seams, to start blindly yelling and killing things is overwhelming. He needs to keep it together, keep a cool head. Mere violence won't help Buffy at this point. Later, when they're inside, he's going to tear that bastard apart limb by limb, wrench his head off, then burn him to ashes and grind him into the carpet. How dare he lay those filthy hands on his Buffy! She’s his and only his. Did Willow deliberately import him from another world to throw a spanner in the works? It can hardly be unrelated to what they've discovered here.

Dawn and Tara come back. Dawn has her arm around the other woman and keeps up a stream of chitchat.

"So you never went to college in California? You never met Willow?"

"No, I had to stay home and look after my dad and brother. It was expected of me. I took some classes at a community college, though. I just never had the time or money to get a degree."

No wonder Willow managed to convince her to come with her, all the way to another dimension.

"Tara, did Willow mention that this is another dimension? Did you see her using a device?" he asks.

Tara throws him a skittish look. "Yeah, she has this ring she always wears. She twists it, says a few words and a portal opens. It's her responsibility to monitor the portals."

"Uh-huh. So how does she appease the Gatekeepers with all that travel she does?"

"Gatekeepers? I don't know about any Gatekeepers."

Spike exchanges another long look with Dawn. He does hope it's not what he thinks. Even Willow wouldn’t be that callous, would she?

In the cab back home, Dawn maneuvers herself between him and Tara. For Tara's sake, he hopes. He shifts his leg from where it's mindlessly slid against Dawn's shapely trousered thigh. He firmly fixes his eyes on the busy streets outside and tries to think of Buffy. Her body was riddled with bites and bruises, so the other Spike must have been with her for days at least, maybe more. He sees the other thrust into her again, and thinks of what he has seen. Buffy's allowed him to drink from her, a thing he's never even thought to ask for. Does that mean he didn’t want to, or has he been too humble to even dare mention it? Does he want to now? He doesn't know. He leans his forehead against the grimy cab window. Life sucks.

"Tara? We need your help first to rescue Buffy, but we'll try to get you back to your own dimension afterwards," Dawn says.

Tara blushes again. "I - I don’t know about that. Do I have to go back? One of the reasons I came here with Willow was because she made me see who I could have been. Her Tara went to college in California, she was slim and pretty and smart. I I’d been stronger and stood up for myself against my family, I could have been that person, don’t you see? Willow was going to help me sign up for college and all."

Clever Willow, to latch onto the unhappy and unsuccessful ones, who’d be more easily persuaded to leave their lives. Or, kind Willow, to offer help and love. If only they knew what happened to the other Taras.

*

Dawn plays hostess while Spike explains further to the bewildered Tara what the situation is and what they need from her. While she waits for the kettle to boil, her thoughts drift off. She‘s not sure whether things are moving too fast or too slow, but she feels strange, suspended between currents tugging her in different directions.

What if, a little voice whispers in her head, what if we don't rescue Buffy? Maybe Spike will allow himself to be comforted, maybe he will finally see that Dawn is the sweeter, gentler sister. No, she’s not thinking this. She wishes she wasn't thinking this. It’s just that ever since she went to, well, visit Spike, she's been feeling that it's been touch and go. He said no, but only barely. And then he kissed her. The way he keeps avoiding her eyes and the way he doesn’t want their legs to touch could mean he’s revolted, or very much tempted and too decent to want to go for it because of Buffy.

She shakes herself out of these pointless thoughts and goes out to get Indian takeaway and blood. They need to be alert and fit. Tara picks at the spicy food, clearly uncomfortable in their company, but when they start talking about tackling the thrall or the disinvite, she changes completely. She becomes the Tara they knew, wise and motherly, displaying that calm low-key certainty.

Tara refuses to try doing anything with the thrall. She says she doesn’t know enough about vampires and the nature of thrall to even begin, and she’s not taking chances with a pregnant woman and a vampire. Her glance barely rakes Spike, but Dawn notices it and sees Spike wince. Yeah, he’s a vampire too, and Tara doesn’t know him well enough to get the finer points of good and bad, souls and demons. Fair enough.

At first Tara thinks there isn’t a way to break the disinvite. An invitation to a vampire can only be extended by the inhabitants of the house or apartment.

"Can’t you do anything? It's my house too. We've been living there for months," Spike says.

He keeps jumping up and pacing up and down the room like a dog who needs to be walked, until they beg him to sit down. Then he wrings his hands, worries at his hair, makes aborted attempts to start smoking, driving Dawn crazy.

Tara shakes her head. "Those are the laws of magic concerning vampires. Nothing I can do."

"Can't you cheat a little?" Dawn asks. “I’m her sister, and I was made out of Buffy in a magical way. If I manage to get in again, couldn’t I invite Spike?"

"Made out of Buffy? What?" Tara asks.

They have to take the time to explains this to her, but it's hard when everything feels so urgent.

Tara doesn't look very calm and in control anymore when they're done explaining. "You all are just weird. Really weird. I wish I'd never met you. But I think I have something that will do the trick. We can do a kind of spell where you declare yourself to be of one body with your sister. It's used when we need a substitute for an important ritual, if for example the participant herself is unable to come due to ill-health or death. I'm not going to do it by night though, that would be tipping the balance towards evil in its favor. Especially since our team isn't exactly made of purity and light."

"You talking about me?” Spike protests. “I’m good! I have a soul."

"Not just you," Tara says. "but yeah, you. I can feel your demon struggling and fighting to get out."

"Kept him under control so far," Spike says tightly.

Spike uncoils his body in one of his violently quick moves, returning as fast to stillness. Tara starts and leans away from him a little more. Tara’s face is serious and contemplative, she seems innocent of other meanings, but Dawn’s heart misses a beat or two. What exactly is she implying?

"We'll wait for daylight if we have to, but isn't there a way around it? Really don't want to wait another night," Spike says. "Time is crucial for Buffy and the baby."

“I definitely don’t want to confront the evil vampire by night,” Tara says. “I’ll do the spell on Dawn tonight, and tomorrow at sunrise we’ll be ready to enter the house."

Tara’s eyes rest briefly on Spike’s face, without actually meeting his eyes. “So you know what to do to kill the beast, Mr. …Spike?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Good. We’ll have to assume he can enthrall any of us, but only one person completely at one single time. That’s what I gather from your story, anyway, Dawn.”

Dawn nods. “Yeah, Buffy attracted his attention so I could escape.”

Spike’s brow furrows.

“I think she could do that because he was busy enthralling me, Spike. It was pretty much impossible for me to move a muscle.”

Spike nods, jaw muscles standing out in bunches. Poor Spike. She can only hope he wasn’t treated to the same X-rated spectacle she was.

“Well,” Tara continues, “it had better be me or Dawn he enthralls, so you can kill him. How close do you need to be to him?”

Spike shows her his stake. “I need to shove this straight into the bugger’s heart and he’ll crumble to dust.”

Tara’s face twists in distaste. “Right. None of my business how you evil folk kill each other,” Dawn imagines her thinking.

“We need something of Buffy’s. Spike?”

Spike looks agonized and helpless, vaguely patting his pockets as if something that belongs to Buffy would be hiding there.

“I’m Buffy’s,” he says to Tara, only half joking. “Would that do?”

Tara throws Dawn and unreadable look. “I don’t think it would a good idea to bind you two together," she says slowly.

Dawn feels a flush spread all over her body, tingling harshly, and she keeps her eyes on her hands in case she meets Spike’s. She's almost sure Tara was referring to the thing between them, that may or may not exist only in her imagination. Tara can apparently spot this right off, and she doesn’t even know them. She reruns the words inside her head for a second time and she she's sure Tara meant exactly that. Dawn's got nothing else on her conscience, after all. In a way it’s good, a confirmation of her hopes about Spike. After he put her out of his room last night, those had been pretty much dashed. And the thing is, she wasn’t really surprised, he’s always been all about Buffy, but now things are looking up. He kissed her today, and Tara suspects something between them. It’s a start.

Spike throws her a look she would have interpreted as anger a minute ago, but now she knows better. It’s lust. Ha.

The bones in his face stand out sharply, and she can just see him itching to start pacing again. Eventually they settle on a cross necklace that Buffy loaned to Dawn a long time ago that she’s never returned.

“Anything else we need to bring? Is there first aid stuff in your house, Spike?”

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is thick with some emotion. “Buffy wasn’t looking so good. Maybe some food and drink?”

Tara looks at Dawn. “Can you pack some nutritious stuff?”

Dawn realizes she’s very much in awe of this adult Tara, in spite of her look of poverty and her bad hair. She’s so calm, so self-assured without being dominant. Tara still makes her feel like a child, in spite of her twenty-eight years.

“Spike,” Tara says, “I hope everything you need for the birth is in the house? Birthing mattresses, birth cord clamps, baby clothes, diapers?”

Spike gapes. “The baby isn’t due until next week,” he says. “We didn’t have everything bought yet, there was time enough for that.”

Dawn feels a pang at the repeated ‘we’. Spike and Buffy are a 'we' together, an entity she doubts Spike and she will ever form, in spite of her rising hopes in that direction.

Tara sighs. “And when have babies ever arrived at their expected time? I’ll make up a list for you, Dawn. Is there a place where you could get that stuff at this time of day?”

Dawn looks at the clock. “I can try.”

Dawn and Spike each perform their appointed tasks. By the time Dawn returns with the extra food for Buffy and the herbs and candles Tara requested, Tara’s preparations are well underway. She’s cleared the tiny living room of furniture, which now stands stiffly and uncomfortable close against the walls. She’s drawn an incomplete circle on the carpet with kitchen salt and has set out several plastic bowls.

“Dawn,” Tara greets her, preoccupied. “I could only find this Tupperware stuff. You got any pottery bowls somewhere, or wooden ones? Both would be better for the magic than plastic.”

“I don’t think Tamsin’s much of a cook,” Dawn says.

Tara sighs. “You are both such unnatural creatures, it’ll be hard enough to draw on Mother Earth as it is. And now plastic bowls.”

Dawn thinks of pointing out that Tara’s dress is polyester, but she decides not to. She finds unused stainless steel bowls for her, still in their pretty wrapping. She sits down in the middle of the circle, trying to be relaxed and concentrated on helping Buffy as Tara instructs her to. Tara fills the bowls with various herbs, and sets down seven candles inside the salt circle. She lights them, and finally closes the circle with more salt. Dawn sees it's fancy gray Sel de Mer, typically Tamsin. Doesn’t cook, but does own up market bowls and salt.

Tara starts chanting. Spike has been relegated to the kitchen and fidgets, seated on top of the kitchen table, gnawing on his fingernails. Dawn yawns. It’s been an enervating couple of days and nights, and she has a hard time staying awake.

Dawn’s head falls forward, waking her, and she snaps her eyes open guiltily. Tara is sitting straight across from her, silent and completely relaxed in her cross-legged position. Dawn has a crick in her neck and a cramp in her thighs. She looks around for Spike. He’s still in the kitchen, but now seated on a chair with his elbows on the table, his head cradled on his arms. Dawn can’t tell if he’s asleep or not.

“Are we done?”

Her voice sounds odd in her own ears. Has she really been sleeping, and for how long?

Tara nods. She doesn’t smile a whole lot, Dawn notices. Is it their fault for being so unpleasant and against nature, or is it a natural gravity? The original Tara smiled often, from nervousness, to placate, to take the sting out of the things s she said. This one is past that, she guesses. Tara scatters the salt in one part of the circle with a wipe of her hands. Dawn rises creakily and steps out. She stretches, attempting to get her stiff body back into its natural shape.

“So when I wake up tomorrow I’ll be Buffy?”

Tara still doesn’t smile. “If everything has gone well, you’ll be able to convince the house magic that you are Buffy. You don’t have to be convinced of it yourself.

Spike rises with a clatter of chair legs from his place at the kitchen table, scratching his head and looking creased and squinty-eyed from sleep. He’s very cute like that. He catches her eye when he stretches luxuriously and frowns, turning away from her. Ouch. Dawn wishes Tara hadn’t made her loaded remarks.

*

Spike wakes with a start from a fitful sleep on Dawn’s short lumpy couch. For a few moments, he doesn’t know what has awakened him, but then his blood leaps gladly at the sight that greets him. It’s Buffy. She sits on the armrest at the opposite end of the couch. His sleeping brain is simply happy to see her and refuses to pay heed to the vague misgivings that bubble up from his gut.

“Buffy,” he says stupidly. How can this be?

Buffy gets up to approach him and his eyes do flip flops to accommodate the height he expects and the height he sees. Spike realizes the significance of the tallness, the water-like fall of the straight golden hair and wakes up completely. He might have known a third night spent under Dawn’s roof would bring nothing good.

“Get back to bed, Dawn,” he says, and twinges with guilt at the weary annoyance in his voice. “Not again, okay.”

Buffy’s face falls, Buffy’s lips wobble, and Buffy’s voice says, hushed, “But baby, it’s me. Aren’t you happy I’m back?”

Spike clenches his teeth and prays for patience. She’s not even pretending to be pregnant for God’s sake, and he’s supposed to fall for that? He sits up, grateful that he’s wearing his jeans, an absolute fucking necessity in Dawn’s vicinity of late, and grabs her arm.

“Don’t I get a kiss?“ Buffy pouts.

“Dawn, please cut it out. This is not the sodding time for playing sodding games!”

A faint frown mars the golden forehead. “What are you talking about? Why are you calling me Dawn?”

The way she tosses her head is so Buffy that Spike hesitates for a second. Does she really think he’s Buffy? Is this a byproduct of the spell?

Dawn as Buffy uses his hesitation to throw herself upon him, which at 6 inches and 30 pounds more than Buffy is no small matter. She wrestles his arms behind his head and grabs his chin in her other hand. It’s only a faint shadow of the force Buffy could use for the same maneuver, but it still stirs him more than he’d like.

The door to the guestroom opens and Spike sighs with relief.

“Tara!” he says. “We need your help here. Dawn is under the illusion that she really is Buffy.”

Tara clutches a towel around her borrowed pajamas and looks at Dawn closely. The Buffy face frowns and tries to twist away from the scrutiny in those mild calm eyes, as merciless as it’s gentle. Tara’s lip curls. Spike has never seen that face look upon Dawn with anything but sweetness and it hurts him to see it so noticeably absent now. Poor Dawn. Who loves her?

“She’s faking it. The spell does no more than cloak her in Buffy’s likeness, it doesn’t addle her brains. Of course, one could say her brain is addled enough with her silly crush on you.”

Spike’s moved in spite of himself and puts his arm around Dawn’s thinly covered shoulder.

“Let’s get you back to bed, Dawnie," he says roughly but not unkindly.

She leans into him, sniffling, but very warm and almost Buffy-shaped.

“Are you sure you're the right person to tuck her in?” Tara’s voice sounds behind him.

There’s no judgment in it, just a cool stating of probabilities.

Spike wants to lash out to defend Dawn and himself, but he reins in his temper and thinks about what she says. He nods at her and disentangles himself from Dawn. The Buffy shape is still disconcerting, and for a moment, as Tara leads Dawn to her bedroom, he wishes he’d just gone along with the make-believe, so he could pretend to sleep in Buffy’s arms. It’s not just the knowing she’s hurt and suffering, it’s that he misses her physical presence at his side. She’s always there, warm and sweet, or sometimes warm and bitchy, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the rhythms of her body that soothe him, the rushing of her blood, the slow steady drum of her heart, her small sighs and movements. They’ve hardly slept a night apart for all these years, and he can’t find sleep on his own anymore. She’s his and he needs her right now, wants to bury is face between her breasts and his cock in her pussy and forget all the misery. He uses the couch and the pillow as substitutes, but they make a poor job of it. It’s nearly half past three, but he doesn’t expect to get any more sleep that night. He needs to succeed so badly tomorrow. He needs Buffy, real Buffy.

Chapter 8

When they leave for Buffy and Spike’s flat, some hours later, Dawn is silent but cooperates well enough. Her

Buffy looks are less disturbing now that she’s not trying to pretend to be really her. She’s far too tall and too

bosomy, too not-pregnant to deceive anyone for a single moment. and Spike feels some belated guilt for

those gullible seconds last night.

The door is locked again.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger. She changed the lock. I forgot, fuckity fuckity fuck.”

“Tsk.”

Tara grins and lifts one eyebrow. With he biggest smile Spike’s seen on her face so far, a flourish of her

plump hand, a few whispered words, the door opens soundlessly. Very impressive.

Spike’s anger reluctantly dribbles out of him. Not for the first time he wishes he could do this alone, save his

lady like a man should, kick the door in with a great big shout and fight his rival to the death. Instead he has

to rely on a woman who loves him a little too well, and one who loves him not at all.

Tara nods at Dawn. Dawn breathes in deeply and squares he shoulders. She doesn’t look so much like Buffy

right now, except for the coloring; but when Tara takes her hands and they murmur some chant or spell

together, Spike sees something indefinable in her posture change, She lifts her head in a very Buffy gesture

and Spike swallows a way a rush of feelings. He doesn’t know for which sister exactly.

Dawn flicks him a look, raw with anger, he guesses, but it could also be fear or love. Her natural reactions

are masked to him because of the spell, and he has to rely on facial expression alone, like an ordinary man.

She steps inside and immediately turns back to face them.

“Come in, Spike," she says softly.

Spike hesitates, looks at Tara for confirmation. Can it be this easy? Tara waves him over the threshold and

he steps inside his own home for the first time in weeks. There are subtle signs of dilapidation. Clots of dirt in

the corners, a shriveled apple core on the floor, a vague musky smell like a dog kennel.

The hot flood of anger that courses through him suddenly is welcome; at least he can act. He tightens his

hand around his stake, and softly and swiftly as only a vampire can, he goes where his nose and ears are

leading him and heads for the bedroom. Unwashed woman and rotting flesh, two heartbeats; a tiny, very fast

one and a slower, more powerful beat.

Relief clouds Spike’s eyes and makes his hands tremble. He leans his forehead against the doorpost for

precious seconds. They’re both alive. He straightens and kicks the door in with relish. This is the kind of

action he’s been pining for. He hurls himself into the room, calculating where the vampire should be by

Buffy’s heartbeat. There the monster is, awakening from his undeserved sleep, and even more deteriorated

than two days ago, if the moldy patches are anything to go by.

The whole left side of Spike’s body clenches in preparation for the strike, right into the heart of his enemy,

who has one foul hand on Buffy’s head. Then he can’t let go of the stake and stands in agonizing imbalance,

caught bye the iron gaze of those pale blue, nearly white eyes.

He chokes from the failure, throws his will against the barriers imposed on it, but he’s helpless as he watches

his outflung hand with the stake in it slowly sink down. He can’t even shout or growl or gnash his teeth, he

must watch while the awful thing that once was Spike shuffles towards him with its uneven gait.

The look from the rheumy eyes pins Spike down like a bug under a magnifying glass, his wings about to be

ripped off and his sex organs mounted separately on a little display. This is not how he imagined rescuing

Buffy. He hears shocked gasps and thundering heartbeats behind him, stupid bitches coming in after him

instead of sensibly staying out of the fray, movement on the farthest reach of his peripheral vision, he can’t

bloody move his eyes, damn the fucker to hell.

The stench and the snaggle-toothed grin come so close to his face that for one terrifyingly insane moment

Spike thinks the monster is going to kiss him. But no, the stake is plucked from his grasp and moves to the

left of his breastbone.

“You thought to kill me and take my woman? Betrayer! Now you’ll be the one who’s killed,” the liquid voice

lisps, almost unintelligibly.

Betrayer? Who the hell is he calling a Betrayer? He had Buffy first, he won her back fair and square, or she

him, that doesn’t matter now. The other Spike should have stayed with Dru, not caught this filthy disease or

whatever it is, and come after his Buffy.

“It’s my child, the child of my body!” the thing goes on, spraying spittle in Spikes face while he puts pressure

on the stake. It’s about as uncomfortable as an angry finger poking him, but in the end, perseverance will win

out. Spike’s not going anywhere, try as he might.

Buffy’s voice cuts through his hopelessly circling thoughts, clear and cold.

“Look at me Spike,‘” she says. “I’m the one who will kill you.”

Her last word ends in a grunt, and she enters Spike’s vision, hunching over like someone in pain. She gasps

rhythmically and Spike’s too stunned to give meaning to her words and actions. Which Spike does she want

to kill? He can’t be sure of anything anymore. The girls behind him are breathing so loudly that he’s afraid of

missing the Buffy-monster exchange.

The stake against his chest clatters to the floor and zombie Spikes turns around with an agonized mewl.

“No!” he shouts, gurgling up maroon parts of throat lining. “I’m going to kill him, I…”

Buffy straightens up again and her eyes are not on Spike but on his rival.

“I’m going to kill you,” she says, and her voice is soft and regretful now. “Look at me, Spike. Don't fight it.

You’re mine to kill.”

The creature nods and slowly sinks to his knees. Spike can’t see its face, but the misshapen hands with the

missing, rotting or skeletal fingers come up and scrabble at Buffy’s belly.

The evil disgusting monster will kill her, Spike thinks wildly, and he won’t be able to prevent it. At least he’ll

rip its head off afterwards. He still can’t move a muscle. Buffy’s eyes shine with dark compassion in her

wasted face. She looks like a woman who knows exactly what she's doing.

Spike wishes he understood what’s passing between Buffy and the kneeling Spike at her feet. Whatever it is,

the other Spike bows his head to the side and theatrically rips his shirt from his chest, a clear signal that

Buffy is free to kill him. Spike cringes at the memory of having acted exactly like this, long ago. How

dramatic, how exaggerated. A wonder Buffy hadn’t staked him for overacting, but he’d meant every syllable

and every gesture with his whole heart.

“Kill me, Buffy,” the Spike says, sounding almost normal. “Because you love me.”

Buffy bends over and kisses the rotting brow. For one moment longer, her lips rest there and then the Spike

at her feet falls silently into dust.

*

Spike gasps. His bottled up momentum makes him stumble forward, and he just manages to catch himself

on the footboard of the bed. His anger rattles around without an object to latch on to and bounces off the

walls.

“Buffy! Are you all right?”

Tears drip silently down her thin cheeks. Spike’s heart sinks. Did she love the creep after all? He tries to

catch her eye, wants to ask her. He needs some confirmation of whatever has been going on here, but her

face closes off from him, her eyes look inward and she turns away. Her hands grip the bed, hard, so that the

too prominent tendons stand out even more, and she breathes in harshly, in a rhythm Spike finally recognizes

from her yoga exercises.

Domino stones fall to all sides in his anxiety clogged brain and reveal paths to known concepts. He knows

what he’s seeing; she’s in labor, and the breathing exercises are to help against the pain.

There’s a mighty impulse rising up in his blood, to start running around like a headless chicken and call for

boiled water and clean linen, but he quells it with what‘s left of his common sense. He puts aside all

questions and feelings from the last days and weeks to be resolved later, and turns to the present crisis. First

he needs to get Dawn out her of here. This is a private moment between him and Buffy, not for her to see.

Dawn and Tara are still standing in the door opening. The whole drama must have taken place in less than a

minute.

"Dawn!” he barks. “Get to the kitchen and start boiling water! We need at least six gallons.”

Dawn doesn’t react immediately; she stares at the heap of ash on the floor and at the now tiredly slumping

Buffy. Spike looks beseechingly at Tara. Please let her understand and help him.

She nods coolly at him and leads Dawn away to the kitchen.

“Dawn,” Spike hears her say, “It’s not over yet. You need to keep your head cool and do exactly as I say. Get

a good start on boiling all that water and in a few moments I’ll come over to you with a list of things that must

be done.”’

Tara’s back within a minute and rolls up her sleeves. Spike still can’t recall any of the things he should be

doing from all the Birth Partner books he devoured, and hasn’t moved from his spot. He doesn’t want to take

the risk of doing the wrong thing

“Right,” Tara says. “We need to make Buffy comfortable. I can’t imagine you’ll want to give birth on those

sheets, do you, even if the new ones won’t last long.”

Buffy pants on grimly, preoccupied with what’s going on in her belly, and doesn’t react.

Random gobbets of information pop up in Spike’s brain, like debris after a shipwreck. “We have to call the

midwife,” he says urgently. “Buffy, do you have the number?”

Buffy turns an indignant eye on him, but doesn’t speak.

“Calm down, Spike,” Tara says. “Buffy’s had, what, three contractions so far? There’s no hurry whatsoever.

We’ll be doing this for hours yet, even if she’s fast.”

Her voice is so calm, so certain and reasonable, that some of Spike’s anxiety simmers down. Tara knows

what to do. Buffy will be fine. Together he and Tara clean up the room and change the sheets. Tara fetches a

glass of milk and a sliced apple from the supplies they brought; Spike is shocked when he sees how avidly

Buffy devours the food and drink. When he thought of the hardships Buffy would be going through, he hadn’t

thought beyond sexual abuse and frequent blood drinking. Dawn remains busy somewhere else in the house;

he’s profoundly grateful to Tara for that.

He approaches Buffy hesitantly, his hands big and useless things at the end of his arms. “Buffy, love? Would

you like more food? Orange juice, fruit, water, cookies?”

“Everything,” Buffy nods.

Spike squeezes her arms briefly between contractions. The knowledge from the birthing books skitters from

his grasp on stiff panicky legs when he reaches for it, but aren’t contractions supposed to be further apart in

the beginning?

He finds Tara in the mercifully Dawn-free kitchen and asks.

Tara nods, busily slicing more fruit. “Most women have more rest in the beginning, but everyone’s different. If

she goes on like this, she’ll have a short, but real intense labor. My concern is how undernourished and

exhausted she is right now. Let’s feed her again and give her a shower. She must feel awfully dirty.”

When the Buffy, silent and busy with her own body, is clean and dressed in a fresh nightgown, she gets on

with the business of labor as if nothing has happened. She seems in control. Spike bolts to the kitchen again,

feeling useless and in need of some violent action. He hasn’t even gotten to kill the fucking bastard. What

point is his existence, anyway? If only he could go out for a nice brutal kill or something, but it’s broad

daylight and he’s not going to leave Buffy alone again.

Tara sends him gently but firmly back to the bedroom. “Just be there. And how about this? She can lean on

you just as well as she can lean on a headboard. Go on.”

Spike tiptoes back in. There’s no real need to be silent, but Buffy is making so little sound that he feels

constrained and awkward if he makes a noise. He can’t read the look Buffy gives him, and her body is in such

turmoil that he has no clue to what she’s feeling except pain and relief. And quite possibly that's all she’s

feeling right now, no need to read anything in it, is there? How do other people ever communicate without all

the extra heartbeat and scent information? It’s like stumbling around between aliens when the universal

translator on your tricorder is off-line.

Spike sits down on the edge of the bed and waits for the current contraction to subside. It’s only ten to nine,

strangely enough. How can so little time have passed? Here he is, in his own pleasant airy bedroom, on his

own cream sheets, and he has absolutely no idea of what to do next.

Buffy looks at him, blowing out a tired breath. Spike holds out his arms and she leans into him as naturally as

if they’d agreed on this beforehand. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t want to spout banalities, inquiring

about the relative badness of the last contraction or some such. He strokes her back and she sighs

contentedly.

It’s only a few minutes before he senses the renewed attack. Thank God, he can read her body, he knows

her again. Her fingers dig furrows into his arms and he welcomes the pain.

“Lean on me, Buffy. You’re doing great. Good panting, that’s my girl.”

Buffy’s too deep in the breathe in, hold, breathe out pattern to answer him, but her fingers unclench and

clench briefly. They’re talking.

This is how he imagined it would be, Buffy working along with the instinctive actions her body, him steadying

her, being there for her, participating in any way he can, even if a headboard or a tree would do as well. It

makes him ridiculously happy in the middle of all the turmoil and confusion. Things can be all right again,

they will be after they get through this.

Time bunches up, then lurches forward again with the rhythms of Buffy’s womb. When Spike notices that the

time between the contraptions is getting really short, he wakes out of his Buffy-induced trance and tentative

fingers of panic creep in back in. The miraculous Tara chooses that moment to pop her head around the

door.

“Tara!”

“Yes?”

“One minute between contractions. Now what?”

Tara examines Buffy, who suffers it in silence. Tara purses her lips. “So do you have insurance? Were you

planning to take her to hospital to deliver?”

“'S not the same as where you live, we’ve got NHS. the midwife is our contact with it. We don’t want any

hassle or authorities getting a whiff of us, so we decided on home delivery.”

“You call her,” Tara decides. “With luck, the baby will have arrived by the time she gets here.”

Great, a new phase, where again he doesn’t know what to do or what to expect. He searches for his cell,

drops it twice, has to hook it up to let it recharge and is thoroughly flustered already when a bloodcurdling

throaty yowl bursts from the bedroom. He’s back there before the yowl has ended. Buffy is sitting straight up

in bed, her eyes popping out of her head, bellowing.

Tara retrieves her hand from between Buffy’s legs. “She’s got full dilation. You’re ready to push, honey.” Her

voice and face are calm and bland as milk.

Spike’s not. “Yes. Okay. But the scream. Why was Buffy screaming?”

Even Buffy, deep in her trance, manages a brief eye-roll, echoing Tara’s grin. Secret female knowledge

oozes from their pores, excluding him.

“Don’t worry, Spike, Buffy just felt her first urge to push. It’s a powerful, primeval kind of feeling.”

“You have kids, Tara?” Spike says, unable to reel in his mind from the wild zigzags it’s making.

Tara’s face shadows. “Yes,” she says.

Spike regains enough control to zip his tongue. Not now. He looks at Buffy, waiting for her next action. Buffy

stares back. Nothing happens.

“Spike,” Tara asks softly, “what did the midwife say?”

The cell shoots from Spike's nervously clenching hands and he just manages to catch it before it lands on

Buffy’s head. Under the amused eyes of the two women, who are suddenly acting as if they’ve had a dozen

babies together, he calls the midwife. She gives him a right bollocking but agrees to come over.

Spike’s just in time to notice the change in Buffy’s body language and gets back in position so she can hold

to him. Her whole demeanor has changed. No longer space Buffy, hunched in on herself, grimly breathing to

bear the pain. Instead, she wears a look he knows and loves. It’s the triumphant warrior in the middle of a

battle she’s winning. He can still see it’s hard work, but there seems to be no pain.

This doesn’t last. After a long push, Buffy’s becoming purple in the face from effort, he sees the surprise and

hurt grow on her face.

“Stop pushing,” Tara says urgently. “Puff the next one away. You’re almost there.”

Buffy moans. “It hurts.”

“Just a few moments more, sweetie. Try to relax.”

Buffy’s almost breaking his arm, but she puffs obediently. Her eyes search his, scared and anguished. Spike

can do nothing but be there and push her hair out of her face, wipe the sweat off.

“Here it comes! Gently, Buffy, a small push – stop! Puff now. Good girl. The head’s crowning.”

Head? What head?

“Yes, softly, yes, there it is!”

A wet black and red thing has emerged from between Buffy’s thighs. His child is deformed. Oh God. Buffy

gasps in relief.

“Good!” Tara says. “Just one more, Buffy, An easy one. Just try, honey, and see if a good one comes along

to help you.”

A heap of slack lilac sausages slide out. What kind of creature have they made? He’ll love it anyway, no

matter what it looks like. He could take it out nights, maybe, where no one can see it. Tara deftly catches it

and deposits it on Buffy’s belly. Buffy grasps it greedily.

“It’s a boy. A healthy boy.”

It must be true if Tara says it. It doesn’t look right. Tara fusses with the head and a soft mewl comes from the

little creature in Buffy’s hands.

“Spike! Oh Spike, look!”

Spike’s vision is graying. He blinks hard to steady himself, bends over the snuffling little thing and stares

straight into impenetrable dark blue eyes. He wants to touch the red wrist and a tiny hand grasps his finger,

and then his heart.

“He’s quite a boy,” he says, embarrassed by the quaver in his voice. “Should his feet be so blue?”

“They’ll turn pink soon enough. He’s perfect,” Tara says. “Everything is just right. Do you want to cut the

cord?”

His nerveless fingers fail to grasp the scissors she holds out the first time. “What Cut? What? Where? I don’t

want to hurt them.”

Tara directs the scissors firmly to a place between two plastic clamps. “Here.”

It’s the most nerve-wracking cut he’s ever made. He expects howls of anguish from Buffy or the baby but they

seem oblivious to what he’s done. Buffy’s face is shining

“Spike, look, he has five fingers. And one curl.”

Spike dares to put his hand on the soft warm head. He hopes his hand isn’t too cold. The texture of the

downy skin is like a very ripe apricot, a bit loose and wrinkly, very soft and fragile, hinting at flesh more

tender than warm butter underneath. It’s more, deeper, bigger than anything he could have imagined. His

child. Their child. He can’t believe he’s a father. Buffy’s a mother. The implications for the rest of his life are

hazy, but immense. How will he ever bear up to this?

“Can I give him my breast?” Buffy asks.

“Sure,” Tara says. “You milk won’t have come in yet, but he'll like it.”

Spike holds his breath along with Buffy when she puts her nipple against he baby’s mouth. The baby

whimpers and opens wide. He sucks, kicking his legs and scrunching up his velvet forehead. He quickly loses

interest and yawns again. He can yawn, that is so clever.

Spike’s arms are empty. If only he had a heartbeat and body warmth to soothe a child with. Buffy reads his

mind and offers the baby up to him. He can’t believe how little a baby weighs, how small he is; he seems

shorter than his forearm.

He remembers to put the head in the crook of his elbow and cradles the body to his still chest. His heart is

expanding, ‘tis grown a baby in it. It’s truly awesome; it’s love.

Buffy smiles proudly at him. They’re fine. Nothing could come between them if they can produce a wonderful

complete being like this.

Chapter 9

Dawn’s doing her kitchen help, take two thing, boiling useless water and slicing countless pieces of fruit. She slashes at the hapless pear, methodically reducing it to into a pulpy mash. How come she’s doing this instead of the vitally important stuff going on in the next room? Not that she’s that keen on birthing babies or has anything to contribute, but it's the principle of the thing. It’s like the past ten years haven’t happened, as if she’s not D. Summers, Ph.D., sought after don and queen of her particular pond. Here she’s the lowest pond scum in the Buffy and Spike Park, unseen, unwanted.

She can hear Tara's soft voice, Spike's abrupt nervous sentences, silence from Buffy. When the unexpected bellow shatters the air she jumps up and runs to the door, paring knife still in her hand. What can she do? Tara talks calmly, so nothing’s wrong. There are more cries, less surprised and vehement now, punctuated with terrible silences. What on earth is going on in there? She imagines Buffy bleeding, wracked with pain, dying, sad and widowed Spike. She could comfort him. Once she's in this groove the terrain is familiar, as is her isolation in the kitchen, forever shut out from where the real action is.

The little knife slithers out of her juice-slicked grasp and cuts a gash across the base of her left thumb. Bright red blood wells out silently. No doors to other worlds tear open, no dragons burst from the kitchen ceiling. Why is she here? Whatever her origins, why is she still hanging on the fringes of Buffy's life? Her very choice of profession was inspired by a desire to be useful to Buffy, to the new Council. To be in, to count for something. Who told her to take up demonic studies? No one. She should have chosen Medicine instead, or even better, returned to the U.S. Spike and Buffy never see her as an adult in her own right, never take her seriously. She’s been absolutely essential to Buffy’s rescue and does she get any thanks for it? No sir, no way. Willow's never invited her into the inner circle, Buffy was only too glad to escape to Tibet and Italy with Spike in tow.

"What's in it for you, Dawn?" Tara asked her a few hours ago when they were tearing cellophane wrapping from baby clothes and stuffing them in the washer. "What is your life?"

Dawn almost bursts into tears. How does Tara know these things? How does she see that Dawn still, after all these years of independence and academic success, feels like the fifth wheel in her sister’s wagon?

She can learn another demon language, write another brilliant monograph on demon migration or the present location of the Old Ones, but Buffy will never really care, Spike will never love her like he does Buffy. She will never be the center of the Scoobies. The great enigma is why she wants it. The Scoobies don’t even exist anymore; Spike and Buffy aren't exactly the ideal couple at the moment.

There ought to be something like justice. She liked Spike first, that’s a fact. She discovered him, and that gives her certain rights. And she just knows that there's something there; that he cares for her. Of course he couldn’t show it when she was still so young, but what's stopping him now? Buffy's cheated on him with the other Spike, again. It could be the right time for him to leave Buffy and strike out on his own.

She looks up and sees Tara's calm gray gaze rest on her and her thoughts are immediately exposed as the adolescent fantasies they are. Right. It’s time to stop them and look around at the real world. What does she want, she, Dawn herself? Buffy doesn’t need her, nor does Spike, and they shouldn’t. Tara doesn't have time for her now.

A tiny wail reaches her ears. Well. That must be her niece or nephew. She can’t feel much of an interest yet. She's hasn’t felt what Buffy talked about, the irresistible urge to get pregnant, the yearning to have a child of her own in her arms. In fact, she hopes she’ll never feel it.

Dawn straightens her back and starts making more coffee. It seems very likely that people might want coffee. And food. She’s suddenly hungry herself. They haven't taken the time for breakfast this morning and it’s now past noon. Okay. She stuffs some rolls into the oven. Her tasks here are almost done. Tara and Spike made it pretty clear that she was to stay out of their way, so she will.

Tara comes in with her arms full of more laundry, disgusting bloody laundry this time. Gross. She can do it herself.

Tara stares at her oddly and Dawn collects herself. "How is Buffy? And the, eh, baby?"

Tara smiles. "They're both fine. It was a very easy birth, Buffy’s lucky that way."

So that yelling and groaning was easy? Way to look at it, she supposes. Is there more she should ask?

"What it is it? Boy or girl?"

"Boy," Tara says.

"Name?"

"Not yet. Or anyway, they didn’t say."

"Should I go in and admire it?"

"Let’s leave them alone for a bit, yet," Tara says and presses the button on the washer. “Ah, coffee. Just what I need."

Huh. The other Tara always drank herbal teas. Which she could have remembered earlier and made for her, Dawn realizes.

"Don’t you drink tea?"

"My mother used to,” Tara says with a reminiscent smile, "but nobody else did. I…"

A key turns in the lock. Tara's eyes catch Dawn's and they both know who this is. Tara turns white and her coffee cup rattles on the stone work top. This isn’t Tara’s kind of crisis, Dawn decides, and she acts before she can weigh options.

She steps into the hallway and calls out loudly, “Hey Willow, didn’t expect to see you here!”

She hopes Spike hasn’t sunk to deep into Buffy or parental bliss to hear her.

“Hey, Dawnie,” Willow answers cheerfully, but she needs several tries to retrieve her key from the lock.

Both of them are silent now. Dawn has no idea what to do. Apparently, neither has Willow.

Dawn clears her throat. ”So, you coming to visit Buffy?”

“Um, yeah, I am. Right here, all ready for visiting Buffy. How is she, anyway?”

“She’s good, considering. Still tired and all, I guess.”

Personally, she thinks that was a good answer. Willow can read anything she wants in it. Willow moves closer and holds out her arms for a hug.

“How are you doing, Dawn?”

Dawn flinches but she thinks it isn't noticeable. She leans into Willow's hug, frantically trying to come up with another move. There are no signs of life from either from the kitchen or the bedroom. How is she supposed to resolve the situation on her own? She has no magic or super strength. Only her brains, which are much more useful in difficult translations than in difficult situations.

Willow’s voice buzzes in her ear, her arms still around Dawn. Bemused. “Ah. I thought so. Tell me, Dawn, what are you doing here? I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

She releases Dawn and smiles widely, sweetly. She’s even scarier like that than when she was veiny black-haired Willow.

Think, Dawn Summers, former honors student and valedictorian. Keep her busy. Give nothing away. “Well, I found Spike, with your detector thingy, like we agreed to. And then Buffy staked him. Why are you mad at me?”

Willow frowns. “He’s dust? I wondered what was wrong with my calculations. Darn. I’ll have to change some of my plans.”

The bedroom door finally opens and out comes a confused looking Spike. He’s rumpled and glassy-eyed, with filthy hands and smears of blood on his shirt.

Willow's fingers clench convulsively on Dawn’s shoulders. “Spike?”

“Willow,” Spike says. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I totally expected to see you here,“ Willow says brightly. “I mean, you live here, right? So you ‘d be here and there’s nothing strange about your being here!”

“That’s right.”

Now there are three people in the hallway who’re saying nothing. Shouldn’t somebody do something? Get Willow out of here, or make sure she doesn’t see Tara, the living proof of her evil plans?

A faint cry sounds from the bedroom. Willow stiffens in Dawn’s arms and steps away. “So Spike, I guess you’re a Dad now. How does it feel to be a real father of a real baby? Congratulations.”

Her eyes rest on Dawn. “You could have told me, Dawn. You know I would be overjoyed to get news like that. I’d like to be a godmother. Are you doing godparents, Spike?”

Spike runs his hand through his already disordered hair and shakes his head in frustration. “What the fuck are you talking about, Willow? Are you threatening me?”

“Ah. I thought Dawnie here was hiding something from me. Why do you think I would be threatening you, Spike? Haven’t I always been a good friend to you both?”

“Spike, she knows the other Spike is dust. I told her,” Dawn says.

Spike steps forward, but Willow flings up her hands and a force field crackles between them.

“Did you bring him here, Willow? And what for? Why would you set him loose in this world?”

Willow sighs and lowers her hands. “I had…plans for him. I’m doing experiments with timelines, and he was an interesting phenomenon. Unfortunately, he'd turned into vampire when I brought him into this world, and that made him useless to me. He had so much time inside him, you see.”

“I see bugger all,” Spike says. “How could you let him get to Buffy? She’s your friend, for God’s sake.“

Willow frowns. “I was planning to turn him back into a man. I found this nifty ritual that does that, you know. I thought he’d be best off with Buffy, because he knew her and she’s the Slayer. He got away from me once and I didn’t want him to get killed in the London tunnels.”

Spikes vibrating with anger. Dawn would die if he looked at her the way he looks at Willow now.

“Didn’t you think of the baby? Didn’t your realize Buffy would be in danger?” he grinds out.

“Well, she’s fine now, isn’t she? I knew she would be,” Willow says airily.

How can she be that dismissive of other people? Are they even real to her, Dawn wonders. She cringes at own fantasies about Buffy. Like looking in a distorted mirror.

“Bloody hell, Willow! What do you want!”

Spike’s agonized bellow almost shatters Dawn’s eardrums. Yeah, what does Willow want? She’s by far the most powerful person here and she could squash them all like bugs.

“Well?” Willow says. “Where’s Tara and what have you done with her?”

“I’m here, Willow,” Tara’s cool voice says.

Willow flushes brightly and flashes a relieved smile at Tara before she collects herself. For one second she looks like the sweet Willow she was. What is Dawn to think of her now? It’s like she’s two people, scary evil Willow, if not veiny right now, and trembling Willow in love. Like Angelus and Angel, only with less fuss.

“Tara, sweetie, I was so worried when you weren’t home! Why did you leave?” she says, pouting slightly.

Dawn thinks that women over thirty shouldn’t pout.

“Willow, we know what you’ve been doing with all the other Taras," Spike says. “Why, Willow? What’s the point of repeating your mistakes?”

Willow frowns, and the force field around her bulges outward for a moment. “Loving Tara is not a mistake, Spike. You knew her, how can you say that?”

“It is if they keep leaving you.”

“They don’t…” Willow shouts but collects herself quickly. “That’s because they’re not close enough to the real Tara. She forgave me. She came back to me. If I find the right one she will too.”

“Am I the right one, Willow?” Tara says softly and walks up to her, putting a hand on her cheek.

Willow swallows and blinks rapidly. ”I don’t know. You went away, too.”

“Why did they all leave you, baby?” Tara asks. “Did they say?”

Willow grimaces and turns her face away from Tara. “They said I shouldn’t use magic so much. They said they didn’t want me to make them over into the original Tara, the real Tara. They just wouldn’t see that she was perfect, perfect for me, and that I needed her back.”

Willow looks up and flinches away when her eyes catch Spike’s. “I deserve to be loved, don’t I? Why won’t they love me?”

“You started to look at me funny, too,” she says to Tara. “I should have know, your reality was so far away from the real Tara’s, you had to be different. But I used up the Taras in the closest realities, you see. That’s why I needed Spike. I wanted to go back in time, so I could save her from Warren. I needed someone who

was there as an anchor. I’m a good friend, I didn’t want to use any of you guys, because I didn’t know if it would go well, I didn’t want you guys harmed. See? I do think of people! I’m a good person.”

“You could be, honey,” Tara says, so gently that Dawn is amazed.

Tara can’t still love Willow, can she? Not after what she said. She’s so creepy.

Willow claps her hands before her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m dangerous. I could turn you all into toads or little piles of ashes if I wanted to.”

“I know you won’t do that, Willow. I’m here for you and I won’t go away.” Tara takes Willow’s hand and tugs her towards the door. “Come. Let’s go back home. Spike and Buffy and the baby need rest. Come. I missed you.”

Dawn is too awed and surprised to say anything while the two women leave, but when the door slams behind them she turns to Spike.

“Spike, we can’t let Tara go back with Willow! God knows what she’ll do to her! We can’t let her sacrifice herself.”

Spike shrugs. “D’you want to sacrifice yourself instead? I don’t think Willow wants you. And I’m not so sure it’s sacrifice. Our Tara seems to like Willow well enough, or she wouldn’t do it.”

“How can she? Willow’s evil! We still don’t know what happened to the other Taras.”

“True. Goes to show that even evil people can be loved, I guess. I’m just glad she’s gone and Buffy and the baby are safe. I’ll get worried about Willow and the council and the rest of the world later.”

“Spike!”

He’s turned his back on her already and gets back to the bedroom, leaving her alone in the hallway.

The whole scene she just witnessed only strengthens her resolve to get the hell out of Buffy’s life and back to her own. Time to say goodbye to some fond dreams and start thinking of some new ones. She can’t win if she stays here.

Chapter 10

Buffy is lying in her own bed on fresh sheets, showered squeaky-clean, milk, cookies and fruit within reach on her night stand. More importantly, on the other side of the bed her very own Spike sleeps, half dressed and sprawled untidily on his back. In between them is their baby, her little miracle. He's dressed in hastily bought baby clothes of the wrong color and tightly swaddled up in a pistachio green shawl. His red shrimp fingers are holding on determinedly to Spike's pinky. Sensible of him, to pick out the good reliable parent straightaway. She guesses he must have sensed his mother would be no good to him and latched on to the one person who'll always love and cherish him.

The mother in question feels empty inside, hollow, like a dry husk left by some animal after all the good stuff's been scooped out. She's been eaten up from the inside and from the outside, by a monster and by her baby, and there seems to be nothing left. She just lies there, dry eyed and hiding her little shriveled-up heart inside. They don’t know yet how it is with her, but they’ll leave soon and she can just slink off and disappear from the prying eyes of the world. She can't bear to know what they've seen. She hurts each time her sister's pitying eyes touch her and bleeds at Spike's every glance.

She remembers, but can’t really feel the moment of triumph when she’d first felt Phoenix’s lukewarm sausage body under her hands. The relief after the pain and the hard work was like having killed a difficult demon, when for a moment she was able to forget that she’s sore and tired. Usually, there’s, like, sex and pizza after a good kill. But now there was Tara, who in a way she hasn’t quite grasped yet, isn’t the real Tara, and Dawn lurking, and Spike spazzing, and of course her son. She held him in her arms, and that was great, but she doesn’t really know what was supposed to come next. She should have finished the baby books, too, instead of concentrating on the birth. Yeah.

Anyway, she won’t need to know what to do with a baby. Spike will leave and of course he’ll take the baby. It's totally clear to her that he already feels possessive of it, that he loved it immediately in a way she can’t.

She should really try and get some sleep. There's no use in dreaming of sneaking down the stairs, hopping on the nearest underground train and letting it carry her off to a distant lonely spot. No one would know her there, or her terrible history, and she could die alone and unloved, like she’s lived. Tears slither down her thickly creamed face and she orders them to stop. This is so typical of her. The only person she can cry for is herself, and it's no wonder people leave her if she's like that. She closes her eyes and tells herself to sleep, which has always worked before.

Buffy opens her eyes. Has she slept? The light in the room has changed, no longer gray. The late morning sunlight glows through her pumpkin yellow curtains and bathes the room in a warm gentle light. She must have slept for hours. No, the clock says it's been ten minutes. Why can’t she just get some oblivion? She really needs it. She tries to sit up straighter but her stomach muscles are still on strike. She's sore and sleepy, but annoyingly alert at the same time.

A tiny mewl makes her heart race and her breasts ache. The baby scrunches up his little red face and stretches his arms and legs with little grunts and sighs. It looks so grown up. His sea-anemone fist waves on aimlessly and he settles down again. He is kind of cute, actually. A sweet scent rises from him. She’s just going to sniff him once, so she can remember how he smells when he's gone.

Buffy bends over the tiny bundle. Gently she pries the shawl away from his neck and buries her nose in the fragile folds. He smells like warm milk and Soft Wipes. He's gorgeous. Her breasts hang down heavily, almost painfully, the nipples protruding through her thin nightgown. She kisses the warm downy brow and immediately feels guilty. She should let him sleep in peace. Can’t be fun to be squeezed through a narrow bloody hole into a harsh bright world. Poor little motherless thing.

Buffy straightens up with an embarrassingly piggy grunt and looks into blue eyes. Her heart leaps and inexplicably, a tear drips down her nose. She thought she was dry hollow woman, but now it's as if she's as full as Lake Mead, she could just go on crying and milk is going to spout from her boobs any minute now. Spike reaches out with his free hand and cups her wet cheek.

"Hey," he whispers.

Buffy doesn’t know what to say. It’s kind of cruel of him to prolong her agony like this. Can’t he just end it briefly and coldly, without endless waffling and goodbyes? She wipes off some snot and tears and tries to stop the pathetic sobbing.

"Go on then, Buff, let it out,” Spike says. "You deserve a good cry."

Exactly. She deserves pain, with seconds, and side orders of misery, because she’s caused so much of it.

Spike manages to come closer to her without disturbing the baby or losing contact with the little hand clasping his finger. He cradles her head to his chest and kisses her hair. "That was a clumsy way to put it. Just meant you've been through so much, of course you'd need to let it out."

"Just go already, Spike," Buffy sobs. "I can’t bear it if you’re so nice to me. Just take the baby and leave, I know you want to. I'll be fine."

Spike is silent. She quickly sneaks a peek at his face, to confirm how forbidding and angry she thinks it will look, but his expression is so neutral, kind even, that she's thrown. Why would he look at her like that? Has she imagined all this? Did she have some kind of psycho pregnant episode? Her hand steals to her neck, but the crust of healing scar is definitely there. Her hands are still thin, so that would be another clue it wasn’t a nightmare.

"So,” she starts. "Why aren't you mad at me? Did it really happen?"

The baby murmurs and Spike tucks him in tighter before he answers her. "It really happened. Don't beat yourself up about it, love. You're not the villain in the story. I won’t say you didn’t make some bloody awful decisions, but of course you didn't wanna be held in thrall by the other Spike. Nobody would. I'm just glad you and the baby are alive and well. Curious, though, as to why he ended up here. Didn’t quite get what Willow said, that she’d brought him here and he’d been human and all. Tons of spells involved anyway."

He gently strokes her hair and she leans into his hand for a short moment, not quite allowing herself to believe that she might be forgiven. She can’t bask in his love yet, she has to tell him everything, because she is responsible for this, no doubt about it. He doesn’t understand the full scope of what she did. He’ll be so angry if he knows.

"There’s more, Spike. That wasn't the Spike we met ten years ago. This was the Spike I went to for..." She gestures to the baby. “…to get pregnant.”

Spike moves away from her fractionally, but Buffy notices. Her heart sinks. Of course. She doesn’t deserve love and forgiveness, she knew it.

"I don’t get it, Buffy. It was that Spike? He was human and then Willow got him turned again. Not exactly penetrating the old noggin yet, love. Seems worse than I thought”

Buffy swallows. “He was a human being when I met him. I mean, of course he was, or he couldn’t have…you know.”

“Fucked you and knocked you up.”

Buffy tries to look into Spike’s eyes, but he keeps them fixed on the opposite wall, on the empty spot where the painting was going to go.

“Yeah.”

Her cheeks burn at the thought of her sneaky escape from blasted other-dimensiony LA. She bows her head, but then decides she has to face up to Spike, condemnation or not.

"I…I'm not proud of that now, but I left him without saying goodbye. He must have realized I was pregnant. He wanted his child, of course he would, and set out to find me.”

Spike plucks at a fluffy bit of cotton on the cover. “What. Did you even tell him what you were there for?”

“Of course I did. What do you take me for?”

“Dunno. Someone who screwed someone like me.”

“He knew, Spike. He accepted it. He knew I wouldn’t stay.”

“Maybe he did, Buffy, but if I think what I would feel in circumstances like that. I’d be…I’d die rather than let you go.”

“He wasn’t you, Spike.” She tries to catch his eye. “He chose to stay in LA with Angel, and fought the apocalypse, and got the Shanshu instead of Angel. Angel, or being a hero, was more important to him than I was. He wasn’t you.”

Buffy really needs to convince Spike. He’s taking on the hurt an injustice done to that other Spike, and that's just not something she can deal with.

“I came pretty close to choosing that fate myself, Buffy. Doesn’t make him that much different. If the other Spike hadn’t dumped me on your doorstep…”

“You’d never have looked me up?”

“Dunno. Might not have.”

Her eyeballs burn, scorching their sockets. “What are you saying? You regret choosing me?”

“You think there’s a Spike, even now, who’s storming out of the house? Or beating you up? Or fucking you silly?” he asks.

“I guess those are the options you're contemplating?”

“Yeah, that’s right, Buffy, that’s right.”

He turns his face to the window and Buffy is left with the back of his neck to look at. He needs a haircut. She'd like to rest her hand on his sweet boyish neck and kiss it. She can’t do it if he doesn’t look at her first.

“There’s more going on here, Spike,” she says desperately. Anything to change the subject. “Did Willow say she helped him cross the portals? Because it must have been someone who's the Gatekeepers good buddy."

To her surprise, Spike nods. "Sure. ‘Course it was Willow. I knew that, who else would have set up the disinvite on the flat?"

"You must have thought I did that," Buffy says, her throat thick and slow.

“Just for a moment,” Spike says, but he’s still and distant, only six inches away from her.

“Do we have to do something about Willow? Will Tara be okay?”

He looks at her for a second, blue eyes blazing. ”Dunno. I think she will be, for now. But yeah, we have to do something permanent about Willow. Phoenix could have been killed. D’you know what she did to Tara?”

“No. She was wonderful, though. I feel kind of guilty I’ve been seeing her so little lately.”

“Didn’t you notice any changes?”

Buffy shrugs. “Little overweight, bad hair day. That kind of thing?”

Spike shakes his head. “It’s not even the same woman, Buffy. Willow has been shipping in new Taras from other dimensions for years.”

He’s going too fast for her. Taras plural? Yeah, sure, if there’s a plural for Spikes, why not one for Tara, but why?

Spike opens his mouth to explain but seems to give up on it. “Ask Dawn to explain, I’d get it all muddled. Point is, Willow really needs to be stopped. Maybe we should ask Giles and Andrew what they think.”

Spike’s lower lip juts out in thought, and he’s still fiddling with that fluffy bit with his free hand.

“So…what happens now?” she asks.

Spike looks away from her; the hazy brilliance from the window falls on his right cheekbone like a spotlight.

“We go on. Don’t we always? Put it behind us and get on with the future,” he says, but his voice is vague and unconvincing.

Buffy’s heart lurches dizzily in her chest. She’d believe him more readily if he was holding her or something, or at least looking at her. He’s so far away. She stretches out her hand and touches his forearm. He flinches, but then he turns toward her apologetically.

“Sorry,” he says. “Still taking in what you said. About it being zombie vamp’s baby. I knew it wasn’t mine, but you killed the father of your child.” He turns his face to her. His brow is furrowed and his eyes look unhappy. “I don’t want to think about it anymore, Buff. Just makes me…queasy.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

How often can you say that in a relationship and still be believed? Has she used up her quota? She gets unsteadily to her knees and reaches over Phoenix to embrace Spike. It’s awkward, just their heads and shoulders touching, with a great gap and a baby between their lower bodies.

Buffy lifts her head after the brief stiff hug and kisses Spike’s lips. He sighs under her mouth and she wishes she could feed him the love she feels for him right now. It’s so much, how can she convince him it’s enough?

"Spike?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“Yeah.”

His hand slowly glides up the wide sleeve of her nightgown and skims her breast. Her nipple stiffens and a rush of arousal travels to her womb, where it sets up strange vibrations. Everything down there must still be pretty jumbled up, she guesses. She’d like to ask Spike to have a look at it and report, but she can’t bring herself to do it right now. He doesn’t look at her, but down at her nightgown-covered body, and his fingers travel slowly over her slack belly, down to her crotch. Buffy holds her breath.

“Buffy…”

“Yeah?”

The eagerness in her voice is pathetic, but now’s so not the moment to have any pride.

His lips seek her mouth and she opens up to his kiss. It makes her overflow with tears again, must be the hormones; she’s ready for some happiness. He jerks away from her abruptly and when she opens her eyes to look on his face again, she stills at the look on his.

His face is taut with anger, his hands are digging into her upper arms.

“Spike, what?”

He forces out words between clenched teeth. “I wanted to get past this, Buffy, but I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore. You’ve scored some big ones before, but what you said…him being the real father… I've always known you’d kill me someday. It makes me so fucking mad, I wish I could just…”

He gets up violently. The baby cries. She hadn’t noticed it before. Spike stands there, every muscle in his body tensed, trying to get out more words. Buffy hopes for more explanation of what he’s feeling, what he needs, but he gives up and bolts. She hears the door slam. The baby cries on.

*

Spike staggers out of the bedroom and kicks the door shut behind him. Bitch. Fucking bitch. She killed the father of her child in cold blood. It’s like she personally thrust that stake through his own heart. If he’d known that before - he doesn’t know what he’d have done different, but…He crashes on his knees on the cold tiles in the bathroom and pukes his guts out.

His hands on the stark white rim of the toilet bowl tremble, and not just with the heaving shakes. He wants to rip her heart out so badly he can almost taste it. He wants to punch her lying face in, blacken her eyes, sink his fangs into her throat and fuck her to a bloody pulp. How could she? All of it. And the thing is, up until that last confession he'd talked himself into taking it all like a submissive idiot, accepting her betrayal, fucking another guy, even another Spike. He’d have taken everything she dished out to him if she hadn’t told him. Fucking bitch. If she hadn’t just given birth, if she wasn’t a mother, he could take her outside and beat her up so badly she couldn’t walk for a month. He’d fuck her up the arse and in her mouth and her lying cunt. He’d drink her dry and give her a new tattoo with her own blood. Bash her head in.

Spike trembles and pukes again. He hasn’t felt like this in years. Before, he used to act it out on a daily basis on some unsuspecting girl and love it. He wants to do it again so much, but only to Buffy. Only her. She’s the only one who has the power to hurt him that much. She has to pay, the bitch. He can’t kill her, and he doesn’t want to, that would be too easy on her. She has to pay.

A hesitant knock on the door.

“Spike? You okay?”

Spike lifts his pounding head and stares blindly at the tiled wall in front of him. Dawn. Yes. He wipes his mouth and his hand travels slowly down to the aching bulge in his jeans. She’ll do.

He opens the door with way too much force like a clumsy fledge, stumbling in his need to get to Dawn. She's still looking like Buffy on and off, eyes alternating between green and blue, hair suddenly shifting to gold; the spell is wearing off only slowly. He grabs her by those tits she’s been taunting him with for days and propels her backwards into the living room. He launches wild kisses at her face and throws her on the couch. Her upper clothes tear open like toilet paper and her revealed breasts stare at him lustfully. He descends on them, sucking and biting, and Dawn moans.

“Spike, what…What are you?”

Spike lifts his eyes and stares in her flushed and terrified face. “Want me to stop?”

Dawn bucks under the pressure of his hand in her crotch and shakes no. “No,” she says. “Do it.”

That’s what Spike needs to hear, because he’s not the kind of man who’d force a woman anymore, is he? He drags her jeans off her hips, leaving red marks on the white skin of her thighs. Dawn’s legs flop back on the couch bonelessly and she just lies there, her heart thumping her hot fizzing blood around, carrying arousal to her whole body. His fingers explore between her legs and in spite of her acquiescence she’s not quite ready for him, tight and not slippery enough but that just makes it better at this point.

He uses her breast to steady the frantic thrusting of his other hand. His fingers dig into the delicate flesh until it bruises like ripe plums, making pretty pictures like bats or cunts or dancing insects on the white, white skin; bruises the color of her eyes.

“Like it, don’t you? I used to hurt you and you liked it, before we got all white picket fence. Gonna do it some more, gonna write a poem on your skin, gonna use your blood for the words and your come for the spaces…”

Dawn’s eyes are wide, following his every movement. Her color comes and goes, but she’s writhing under his heedless onslaught, moaning and scratching his back and arms. Her blend of terror and arousal is blowing his mind, the memories of a thousand such encounters spicing this current one, the knowing how they ended, how their blood smelled, their fear, their come, their entrails. You can fuck a girl through a hole in her stomach lining if you need to, if her other holes are occupied by vampires that are bigger and stronger than you.

“Fuck you like the cunt you are, make you forget everything, all those other bastards…”

He flings his belt away, frees his swollen hungry cock and plunges inside her. He pulls out a bit and thrusts in again, making her wetter for him, finally shoving in all the way. He has no interest in Dawn getting off; she’ll just have to take what he's dishing out. He needs to kill or punish someone after all those days of holding back and not getting any kind of opportunity to let off steam.

Spike feels his orgasm approaching like a high velocity train in the far distance and zones in on Dawn’s neck. Such a pretty neck, no one’s been there before. He’s never wanted to drink Buffy, because to be fourth, now fifth, in a row just doesn’t do it for him. His face hasn’t changed yet, and he licks and chews on the soft white skin to make it red, make it ready for his real teeth. He licks off the ghosting of blood on his teeth and bares them at her. He needs more terror, more pain. She isn’t there yet.

“Gonna come inside you, make you forget, make you mine again, don’t you dare let anyone touch you ever again or I will kill you…”

She starts talking back to him. “Spike, oh, Spike, I want you so much, I love you, you make me…”

He can’t have that. She’d have babbled on but he puts his hand on her mouth. He doesn’t need to hear that, does he? He growls at her to shut up and when he hears himself say that the realization that he’s doing to this girl what was done to him freezes him. His entire body grows cold from the memory, goosebumps pucker his skin and his balls shrivel up in shame. His erection disappears. He’s playing Buffy and Dawn’s playing Spike. He’d give everything not to know this, not to have done this. He slides out of Dawn, catching his weight on his balled fists, almost swooning from disgust and regret. He’s panting as if he’s run a race, and he wishes it weren’t so, but he could puke again. Why the fuck has he done this? What good did it do to take his anger out on someone else? It should have been Buffy.

He stuffs his dick back in, zips up, roughly hoists up Dawn’s jeans and buttons her up.

“Best get out of here, Dawn,” he says.

“Spike?” Dawn says, as if she's doubting he's there.

She's right, in a way he wasn't, he was off looking up old slights, old frustrations. He jerks away from Dawn. He wishes she wasn’t still lying there with her clothes awry, looking all fucked and confused. He never wanted Buffy to see this. Did he? The door opens and he senses Buffy coming in. She halts within the door opening, clutching the walls for support.

Buffy’s breath comes in sharp gasps and he turns around slowly to meet her eyes. She stares at him like he remembers. Quivering with hurt, her eyes big and dark, almost overflowing. Oh hell.

Buffy straightens up with difficulty, letting go of the doorjamb and clutching her belly. Her voice is low, but carries perfectly.

“Dawn, get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

Dawn looks at him expectantly, not getting it at all, poor twit. “Spike?” she says. “Are you coming?”

Spike’s sick to his stomach at what he’s done, what he’s used her for. He shakes no. Dawn’s eyes take on the wounded look they’ve been wearing lately.

“Spike! You said...you promised…” Her voice rises to hysteric heights.

“I promised nothing,” Spike forces out of his throat. “I’m sorry, Dawn. Please leave.”

Dawn still isn’t really taking this in. She looks from him to Buffy and back again. “How can you stand there like that? How can you do this to me? You owe me!”

Spike says nothing. He takes Buffy’s hand, feeling it tremble and jerk under his palm but holds on. Dawn stumbles away from them to the exit. Her dead white face with its accusing eyes burns on Spike's soul. He deserves that.

When she’s gone, Buffy looks at him. There's no judgment or anger in her eyes, just hurt.

“What did you do to Dawn? And why take it out on her?”

“I needed...” Spike’s voice breaks. “I needed to hurt someone, and it couldn’t be you. You see?”

Buffy shakes her head and reclaims her hand, rubbing it as if he’d burned her with his touch. “Spike, if you need to hurt me, just hurt me. Me, not my sister.”

Spike turns to her, pleading with his eyes. “I’m sorry. I will.”

Buffy shakes hard enough to make her teeth chatter. “Are you going to do it now?”

“What?"

"Hurt me?"

"No. Of course not.”

She’s silent. Then she jerks her head toward the bedroom and starts walking back to it.

Phoenix lies on the bed, his tiny form so slack and motionless that Spike feels a tiny beat of fear pulse through him. He checks the tiny soft wrist for a heartbeat and is relieved when he feels it going fast and strong. Phoenix’ face is rosy and he seems twice as big as he did before. His nose scents a rich sweet smell and he connects the wet spots on the front of Buffy’s robe with the obviously replete baby. His eyes sting. Phoenix’ first real feed and he missed it. Serves him right for being such a prat and being so caught up in revenge and his own hurts.

Buffy undresses and gets into bed. Spike looks at her swollen breasts and her still slightly slack belly and he just wants to bury his face in there and never come out again.

Buffy averts her face when he undoes his belt. “Spike? Please go shower.”

Spike’s face burns. Of course. He’s been inside Dawn. He’s a jerk. There go his hopes of Buffy not knowing what happened.

“Buffy, I didn’t…she didn’t…”

“Does it matter?” Buffy says from behind her hair. “Go away.”

He leans over the washbasin and first of all cools his face with cold water. The only thing that could make a vampire burn is shame, he thinks. He looks into the mirror and sees nothing. That seems appropriate, nothing.

When he returns, he’s wearing only a towel.

Buffy looks at it sadly. “Is that a symbol? Should I take it off?”

He’s so very grateful for her for saying that. “Please.”

Her dear little fingers tremble when she loosens the towel and rest briefly on his stomach. “Come into bed, Spike.”

He climbs in and slides carefully against her tense warm back. He moves slowly, deliberately, afraid of startling her with an unexpected move. Her tenseness gradually leaves her when he just lies there silently with his arms around her and his face in her neck.

“Are we even now, Spike?”

“We’re even.”

What he’s done is burned so deeply into his brains and his heart that it’s still smoking. It won’t go away soon, he knows that. He can’t believe what he did, no more than fifteen minutes ago. How long did it take? Five minutes to destroy your relationship? The strange thing is that Buffy seems to accept it, seems almost to welcome the retaliation. Now he can't throw stones, he supposes.

"Buffy, I want to explain."

“Not really interested in talking right now, Spike,” she says.

Would she allow him to make love to her? He’d like to, very much. It just that it doesn’t seem proper, so soon after the birth, it’s hardly been a day. And so soon after…

He lifts up her braid and kisses her neck where the hair is fine and soft like a baby’s. Buffy sighs and arches into his mouth. Step by step, Spike reclaims her body, stroking her arms, her hips, daring to nudge her satiny ass with his hard-on. She's soft and yielding to every caress, but doesn’t return any of them. At last, Spike can’t stand it anymore, he has to see her face and look in her eyes. He turns her over gently, trying not to jostle her breasts or her belly. How will she look at him? Will they be all right?

Buffy’s face is wet, sad but serene. Her hand comes up and cups his cheek. She wipes away moisture under his eyes and he bends forward to lick the salt off her cheeks.

She smiles a little at that, kisses him. She’s being so measured, so careful. Spike feels very fragile, like he might break if she is too kind to him. She shouldn’t be that kind, it’ll make him weak, he’ll cry. For one moment he thinks he is crying, and it’s a little embarrassing, even if it’s his love who sees it. He has no right to cry after what he just did.

Chapter 11

Buffy wakes up. Again. It feels like she’s had only an hour or two of sleep and when she checks her alarm she sees it’s true. She never realized having a baby was so much work, she’d sort of thought having it was the pinnacle of difficulty and afterwards there’d be pretty clothes and walks with strollers. Instead there’s very little sleep and sore breasts. Not that feeding a baby isn’t wonderful, because it is, but it happens a little more often than she’d like. If only she got more sleep, she’d have more energy to enjoy it.

She reaches for the stack of diapers next to the bed. They‘ve made the bedroom a fortress of food and diapers and baby clothes so they don’t have to get up in the middle of the night any more than is strictly necessary. Spike’s sleeping for once, and she lets him. She can change a diaper. She’s seen him do it often enough by now. Phoenix’ small whimpers still when she starts pulling down his soft little pants, as if he anticipates and likes what she‘s going to do. His dark blue eyes look up to Buffy as if he knows she’s his mother. Maybe he does. She wipes him clean, kisses his tiny little belly, tickles the crease of his scrawny little

hips. He’s so small, although she’d swear he’s almost doubled in size the past days. And no wonder, her breasts are like watermelons, he must get a lot of nourishment out of them.

She finishes wrapping him up in all his layers and lifts him to her breast. He whimpers for a moment until the nipple hits his cheek and then he clamps on hard. He may not have teeth but his cheek muscles sure have near Slayer strength. Buffy breathes fast for few moments until she feels the harsh tingling in her breasts that signifies the milk coming in. Ah. The relief is immense and then she sinks back into the pillows, letting the good part of the feeding lull her into a semi-trance. The baby is sucking ecstatically, his tiny fists beating a tattoo against her breast.

It doesn’t last long. Phoenix has exhausted himself with his strenuous efforts and falls asleep, a little milk escaping from his pursed pink lips. He frowns and curls his hands and then relaxes into a deeper sleep.

Buffy doesn’t want to put him down right away. It’s such a nice feeling, that warm little body tight against her own. Her gaze drifts away from the baby, to the window where the first gray signs of dawn are tinting the curtain. Something alerts her and she looks down into Spike’s eyes, almost as dark a blue as the baby’s, looking up at her sleepily. He has such a sweet look on his face, and her heart lurches in her chest, which it does whenever she looks at him these days.

She can’t be as happy as she should be now, because she can’t forget what happened the other day. Dawn and Spike. She doesn’t know exactly what went down, but she knows Spike, and the only way he would have gotten rid of that much anger was violence or sex. She doesn't want to know and yet she does. She also knows that Spike loves her and never stopped, but those fifteen minutes he was out of her sight hurt so much that she can feel her heart contracting whenever she looks at him.

It isn’t fair. Hasn’t she been punished enough? Was suffering the attentions of Zombie Spike and nearly dying not enough punishment for her thoughtless acts in conceiving Phoenix? There’s no judge she can appeal to on her behalf. She can just hope the sharp squeezing pain will dull over time.

Spike wakes up more fully and lazily lifts a hand to cup her breast. “Buffy,” he murmurs, his voice still thick and fuzzy with sleep.

“Go back to sleep, honey,” Buffy says softly. “Feeney’s fed already.”

Spike’s eyelids droop again and after snuggling up to her more closely, she sees him sink back into sleep.

Buffy puts the baby down and tries to go back to sleep herself, but she's too alert and her thoughts keep meandering back to the very subject she'd like to forget. Spike and Dawn. Who should she be angry at? At Spike, for using her sister, or at Dawn, for going after her man? Her first impulse at seeing their guilty faces was primal, primitive woman growling 'stay away from my man', but now she's had a few days to mull it over things aren’t as simple as that.

Why did Spike do it? Is it her fault? Driving him to extremes with her bad decisions, or was he unable to restrain his vampire nature anymore? She wants to be angry with him but her feeling of guilt is so big that she doesn't really dare. She’s too afraid of what he’ll do if she starts the angry routine. No, he won’t. He promised he would never leave.

And she can’t really ignore the existence of Dawn for the rest of her life. Dawn was wronged; the harsh words Spike spoke to her hurt Buffy, too. Dawnie's her only real family. Should she stand up for her younger sister? This is such a mess. If this is what love is, wouldn’t she be better off without it?

Suddenly Spike’s blithely sleeping form annoys her. She's thinking deep difficult thoughts and he just sleeps on, the insensitive jerk. Look at him, all pretty, cream and pink against the white sheets.

She scoots closer to him and goes straight for the most effective way of waking him up. She grabs his balls and strokes them softly. The satiny skin of his cock jumps against her hand.

"Spike. Spike. What is love?"

"Love is a bloody tyrant," he mumbles. "Drives you hard, makes you do the awful, lashes you forward until your back is bloody and never lets up."

She guesses that is more or less what she’s been thinking.

"Is it worth it, Spike? Did we make the right choices?"

Spike sits up and stretches hard. "Um. What time is it? Time to feed? Do I have to change him?"

"No, we're talking about love."

"Oh, right. Love." Spike scratches his head and hauls her closer to him.

"What I said…I dunno really. That's about big grand sweeping feelings. Burning and consuming. Dunno if I still think that's true. This is small potatoes, what we're doing, innit? Sleeping in one bed, taking turns with the baby, looking out for each other. Still important. Is this love, or is it the other kind, all the passion and heartache?" he says.

"Yeah. Okay, I get that. Both, I think. But is it worth it? Wouldn’t you rather be a lonely hero, a Champion of the people, instead of changing diapers and cooking food? Because…"

Damn. Her voice is trembling and she might cry. She cries so easily since having the baby, and she doesn’t want to make it seem she’s laying on the emotional blackmail.

Spike sighs and strokes her arm with one lukewarm finger. “I’m sorry if it sounded like I regretted my choice. I don't. I regret other things."

He looks at her and then away, shamefaced. They haven’t really talked about things, just went on pretending it hadn’t happened, it’s just too fresh and raw too deal.

"I love you, Spike. You know that, don’t you? I make mistakes, I see that, but I never stop loving you."

"Yeah. I love you too. 'N what I just said, that maybe this is love, this, what we're doing right now? Being a family? There's no maybe about it. Made my mind up. This is it. I was wrong about trust being something for old marrieds. Trust is what we need right now."

"But Spike, we are old marrieds."

He looks disconcerted for a moment, his expression forming a cute combination with his bed-hair, which he's combing and fretting into even wilder curls.

"Know something else too, love. I didn’t know it, but I was carrying some anger around for a long time. But I'm really over that now. Totally forgiven."

Well, that’s just dandy. Spike forgives her for what, beating him up? Using him to work out her anger? Jesus. She thought he’d done that on the spot. And what about the sort of maybe attempted rape in the bathroom long ago? Has he forgotten about that? Heat washes over her, prickling her scalp and face. Somehow this implies that Spike and Dawn did have sex. She doesn’t want to know.

“You know what, I understand Willow. A forgetting spell would be a good thing right now," she says, hearing her own voice tiny and strangled from her throat.

Spike cups her cheeks and leans her head against his shoulder. "I am so sorry, Buffy. I know in my head that you aren't to blame for everything, but it just feel like someone attacked my heart with a cake mixer and made a right mess of it. And so I fucked up."

Buffy catches Spike’s eye for a second but it’s raw and harsh, what she sees there. Not yet, she guesses. She puts her hand on his heart. She never touches him without feeling his reaction travel through his whole body.

"It’s okay if your heart is like a layered cake, Spike. I guess I'd be the chocolate, wouldn’t I? And Phoenix the vanilla. That's okay by me. I'm used to not being vanilla girl now."

It's good, what they're doing, the talking. The lame little quip makes it easier, like skating lightly over the icing on the cake, without delving too deep into the sticky dark brown layers.

"Yeah, you're my little chocolate chip muffin. I'd eat you in a heartbeat."

"We'll be all right Spike, won’t we? Let's go back to Florence as soon as we get a flight. I've really had enough of London for a while."

"We can't leave just now, pet. There are some people I have to check up on."

Buffy's face hardens. "Dawn?"

Spike refuses to back down his gaze. "Yeah. See if she’s all right. And Tara. 'S not right to let her carry Willow's problems."

“I don’t know if Willow’s problems are our concern anymore," Buffy says softly. "Hasn't this gone beyond looking after your friends? I think she’s lost the right to call herself my friend.”

“This is a first, Buffy. First time ever you’ve talked about not sticking to your high school pals like a burr.”

“I would never do it if it wasn’t for Phoenix. He’s more important now than old friends, even Willow. Family’s the most important…”

“Yeah,” Spike says softly.

It’s the subject from hell again. Why can’t they just go on not talking about it?

“Okay. Willow. She's the head of a big organization, what can we do?" Buffy says, wrenching the conversation back on course with heroic effort.

"Point is, sweetheart, if they fire her, she's still a pissy, powerful witch. Then what?"

"Spike the vampire takes on responsibility for the world, is that it?"

"No. That would be silly."

But he shifts uncomfortably in her arms. "Dunno. The way you put it is daft, I agree, but still, I feel I should see to it that she's - out of action."

Buffy grows still. "You'd kill her?"

"Well, I couldn’t, could I? She'd swat me like a fly. But now that you've said it, maybe. She'll never learn. Her magic needs to be dismantled, or if that's impossible, yeah, she should be put down."

"She's not a rabid dog!"

"She's a rabid witch. Who can control her?" Spike says.

"Tara seems to think she can."

"There’s only so much love can do, Buff. I think she will repeat her sins."

Ouch, Spike. Don’t say things like that. They were talking about Willow, which is a nice, safe subject.

"She hasn’t been killing or anything, Spike. Isn’t that a bit harsh?"

"I think we've just discovered the tip of her activities, and there’s a whole nasty, oozing iceberg of evil acts we don’t know about. If she was dealing with Gatekeepers, she must have contact with Wolfram& Hart. That can never be good. We can’t expect Tara to keep all that in check. That's what we're talking to Giles about, innit?"

"What time is he coming?"

"Eleven-ish."

Buffy falls silent. She plucks at his sleeve and finally asks in a small voice. “You said that there was only so much love could do. Am I like a rabid dog kept in check by your love?"

Now that she’s said it, she wishes she hadn’t. Answers could be not of the good. "Well. You do as you please, pet, without thinking of the consequences. Who you hurt."

"But I meant well!" Buffy cries out. “It’s not fair to compare me to Willow. I'm not that callous or manipulative. I just wanted to give you a baby that looked like you. I wanted the best for us."

Spike slowly combs his fingers through her hair. "I know that, sweetheart. But you should ask the people you love if they consent to your plans, even if you mean well. "

Buffy casts down here eyes and her cheeks feel hot. “It’s so weird to hear you say that. We have traded places, haven’t we? You hold the moral high ground, I'm the sinner. When did that happen?"

"Hardly, Buff, hardly. Think I proved that there was still a lot of bad man inside me. We both know what is evil and what isn’t and we have free will to choose whatever we like. You alone made your choices, you and no one else. “

"You sound so implacable. Are you sure you still love me?"

“Hell yeah. I know you, Buffy, I know who and what you are, and I've always loved the whole you. I’ve never set conditions on my love. How could I demand that you be a saint?"

“Bullshit,” Buffy says before she can wisely decide not to. “Like hell you do. Of course you have conditions. Like, do not fuck other Spikes.”

Spike bites his lip. "Well, yeah. But Buffy, if you hadn’t been the girl you were, brave and shining and true, I would never have been moved to get the soul. That will always remain. And you know, not so white and shining here. Never hurt the ones I love. I wish."

Buffy suddenly feels old and wise, much older than the vampire sitting with bowed head next to her. “Of course you hurt the ones you love. They're the ones who care.”

She sighs tremulously. Spike slides his fingers under her eyes, and licks up the salty moisture.

"Sweetheart," he says, muffled in her hair.

She hears the suppressed tears in his voice and repeats his gesture back to him. His tears taste salty, like hers. They are the same.

*

"Giles!"

"Buffy, my dear girl, I'm so happy for you. Let me have a look at you. You look radiant!"

"Fat, you mean I look fat! I know that’s what guys mean by radiant," Buffy says with a pout, but it's pretend, a little dance she and Giles play whenever they meet, which isn’t that often. Playing at still being teenage Slayer and all knowing all seeing Watcher. Neither has been true for a long time."

Giles smiles at her, looking grayer, but otherwise not that much different from when he was her Watcher. These past years have been kind to him; he's doing something he enjoys with a willing and eager pupil, Andrew. He shakes Spike's hand cordially. It’s good he doesn’t know everything.

"Sorry to impose at this godawful hour, but I just got off the phone with Andrew. He's hurrying back from Down Under even as we speak."

"That's okay, Giles, we were awake anyway."

Buffy touches her hair self-consciously; there wasn't exactly time for brushing and make-up, and she's wearing saggy old sweats. It doesn't really matter because it's Giles, but still, a girl likes to look pretty. She vows to go in for a major primping session when Giles is gone and wow Spike into quivering submission.

Giles presses a large colorful present into her hand. "For my godson," he says. "Where is he? Can I admire him?"

"Huh, you really think you were gonna get a chance to not have him shoved in your face at least twenty times? Here. Isn’t he beautiful?"

Buffy drags him over to the baby carriage where Phoenix is lying in all his rosy glory, fast asleep.

"He always sleeps so deeply during the day. Must be the vampire genes," Buffy says proudly.

"I thought all new babies did that," Giles says. "He's lovely, Buffy. And you know, I think I actually detect a resemblance to Spike. Definitely."

"Really? He had hair before, I swear he did, but now he’s bald, so it’s hard to say. But of course he'll looks like Spike. Spike's the father."

"Certainly," Giles says hastily. "I didn’t mean to dispute that at all. I meant something about the brows and nose, rather. But it's nice, isn’t it, that the baby looks a little bit like Spike?"

This would be the perfect moment to tell Giles that Spike is the father not only in name but in fact, but Buffy isn’t going to tell. None of his business, really. Although it might be hard to leave out if they're gonna talk about Willow.

Giles’ present is a rough burlap sack with unvarnished natural wooden blocks. Buffy doesn’t quite know what to say.

"I know he’s a bit young yet," Giles says, "but this is the kind of basic toy that's very important to develop his imagination. Real handcrafted wood, according to anthroposophical principles."

"Wow, thanks Giles," Buffy says. "I had no idea you were into child development and stuff like that."

"Well, it’s amazing what a little research will do,” Giles says.

Spike comes in with coffee and tea.

“Is that your prezzie, Rupes? Great, really great. I had a set just like it. Played with it hours on end,” Spike says.

Buffy shivers internally. Because you had no other toys, she thinks, and there was no TV yet. The boredom.

“Tea, Rupert?” Spike asks.

"Marvelous," Giles says. “One lump, lots of milk, please."

It’s kind of odd to have Giles as a real visitor; it reminds her of the few times that Giles visited the old house on Revello Drive with Joyce still there.

Spike sits down after a possessive check on Phoenix. Buffy watches Giles watching Spike. It must be strange for him to see a vampire taking on responsibilities outside of Slaying and Watchering, areas where Giles has long handed over his tasks to Spike.

Giles puts down his tea and coughs. "I hope you two don’t find me utterly rude, but I'd like to get to business straight away. I'm very concerned about Willow after Spike's phone call. Since it was imperative, in my opinion, to take immediate action, I took the liberty of handling matters with the Council. I hope you don’t mind, Buffy?"

"Geez, no, Giles," Buffy says. “I have other things on my mind, as you may have noticed. What did they say?"

Giles gets out his glasses and starts polishing. Buffy feels a pang of nostalgia. It’s like old times. Only it’s not the Monster of the week, but Willow they’re talking about, which is deeply sad mixed in with the happy glasses-rubbing nostalgia. Being grown up sucks as much as she suspected back then.

"I talked to Smythe. It may surprise you, but the Council has procedures for Heads going astray, so to speak, as something like this has happened before. Normally Smythe would have been acting Head immediately. Unfortunately, he resigned on the spot, as he felt he would be held responsible for not keeping Willow in check. Leaving me holding the bag, so I'm again Head of Council. I'll seek a replacement immediately, because I've really left this job behind me, but for now it gives me quite some leeway to deal with the Willow matter."

"That’s good,” Buffy says uncertainly. "Leeway’s good. So now what?"

"Andrew is coming back from Australia to help me with this…"

"Are you grooming Andrew to take over from you?" Spike asks.

Giles puts his glasses on and throws Spike a quelling look over them. "Perhaps I have someone else in mind entirely. On topic, Spike. We will take Willow from her flat and eliminate the threat she presents."

Buffy feels the word ‘eliminate’ in the pit of her stomach. "I feel so bad about Willow. Is eliminating her all we can do? Is that the only option left? It’s like, it's like it’s all my fault. Look at what happened to all the Scoobies. Willow's a power-hungry magic maniac, Xander drinks and divorces.”

"A dipsomaniac," Spike says.

"What? Never mind. The real Tara's dead. Dawn is…" Buffy takes a deep breath.

"Buffy, how can you think these things are your fault? Besides, I'm fine. Spike's fine and you are fine. And as far as I know, Dawn’s career seems to be taking off really well. It’s only Willow and Xander who aren’t quite so…stable." Giles leans forward. "Willow's own flaws are what made her do this, Buffy. Not you."

"But without me she never would have discovered magic."

"True. I'm sure she would have found another way to abuse power," Giles says dryly.

"How can you write her off so glibly, Giles? She used to be my friend."

Giles pinches the bridge of his nose. "I think writing off is not quite where we are yet, Buffy, although we’re close. Spike’s plan is to capture her and give her another chance to redeem herself. I think I’ve found the perfect place for her.”

“Spike has a plan?”

The words escape her lips like the proverbial nagging wife and she shoots Spike a guilty look. She is a little miffed he didn’t discuss it with her first, but then again she thinks the breastfeeding is messing with her memory and sense of time. Maybe he did.

“I’m more than just a pretty face, Buffy,” Spike says with fake modesty and she’s relieved that he’s not offended. They’re both a little touchier than usual these days.

Spike leans forward to Giles. “You think we will be able to neutralize her powers? She’s strong enough to almost destroy the Earth, remember.”

“I hardly need reminding, Spike. You weren’t there, as I recall.”

“Well, yeah. But you haven’t seen the look in Willow’s eyes, Rupert. Enough to shrink a man’s goolies down the size of Smints.”

Giles coughs. “Yes, well, quite.”

“Okay, and how about Tara? Will she be able to stay in this dimension?” Spike asks.

“Smythe and I spoke to the Gatekeepers’ emissary and the gate’s debts are fully paid. They’ll get back to us with the full record of all Willow’s transactions.”

“So then we’ll know what happened to the other Taras.”

“Spike,” Buffy says, frowning, ”why doesn’t this Tara, who is really wonderful Giles, you’d like her so much if you met her. Where was I? Why wouldn’t she want to go back to her family and friends?”

Spike shrugs. “I don’t exactly know, but I got the impression from her that her home life had been a hard one. I thinks she had a child at one point. I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think any Tara would ever leave a child, so …”.

Tears well in Buffy’s eyes. Something happened to a child. That’s so awful. She gets up mindlessly to check on Phoenix and bumps into Spike. His arm around her shoulders and the quick kiss on top of her head are very welcome and suddenly she wants them to make love tonight. It's time.

Giles is coughing and polishing his spectacles again and it irritates Buffy that after all these years he still isn’t used to Spike and her showing affection. Giles should just get over it already.

Giles gets up fussily, making a big show of putting away hanky and glasses and tucking in his tie, but Buffy sees him take his weight on his wrists and realizes he’s not as young as he was. Of course he doesn’t want to take on the Council again for anything longer than an interim period. He should be home in Devon and yeah, what would a pensioned-off Watcher do? Paint watercolors or knit, maybe.

Giles walks to the hallway with his upright measured pace. He’s stashed another package there in sturdy brown paper. He gives a small grunt when he stoops to pick it up and Buffy hopes she’ll never get that old and stiff. But she will, if the Slaying doesn’t kill her. She turns to the stroller, where Spike is staring in slack-jawed adoration at his son. Spike won’t. Spike’s so old that the time they have known each other is no more than an inch or two in the measuring tape of his long years. Phoenix might make up a foot of it, and her grandchildren another foot, but then? What will Spike do? He’ll go on and she won’t. He’ll need something to keep himself from going insane, a purpose. And possibly, after a century or two of mourning, he might find someone new to love. Or maybe not. His love could be eternal.

“Did you bring it, Rupert?” Spike cuts through her dreamy spell.

Bring what? Spike unwraps the package and it’s a nicely crafted, but otherwise unremarkable wooden box. Great, a nice plain box to keep the plain educational wooden blocks in, she bets.

Spike is oddly silent and caresses the black-brown sides absent-mindedly. “This is him, then? How do I set him free?”

Giles shoves a stack of papers in his hands. “Sign here. That’ll make you the official owner, and then all you have to do is to tell him you release him.”

“Right.”

Spike swallows visibly and Buffy still has no clue what they’re talking about. That is so male, to just assume the new mother will have no interest in anything besides her baby.

“Giles, what is it? Who’s gonna be set free?”

“Shh,” Giles says. “Watch.”

Spike coughs and straightens his spine. In an official tone of voice he says, “Activate Emergency Wesley Hologram.”

Wesley? Wesley’s ghost in there? She’s heard plenty of stories of how Spike and Angel’s gang were chums, as Spike calls it, mates, but she’s never been able to match her mental picture of Wesley with the new guy she briefly met.

A cloud forms above the box and the fuzzy shape of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce materializes. His midriff disappears into the box like Aladdin’s genie from the bottle. Poor Wesley.

“Emergency Wesley Hologram reporting. How may I help you?”

“I’m sorry about all this, mate,” Spike says, all choked up. “If I could I’d have set you free years ago.”

The ghost’s expression doesn’t change.

“I release you,” Spike says.

The ghost closes his eyes in very human relief and nods gravely to Spike. “Thank you, Spike. Goodbye.”

And he’s gone. Buffy thinks it’s very anticlimactic, but Spike sags down in the nearest chair and blows out a long breath.

“God, I’m so glad I could do that. Thanks, Rupes, really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it, Spike. Would have done the same myself. A disgrace to use a former Watcher so.”

Giles takes his leave soon after. Spike and Buffy return to the sitting room and Buffy feels awkward and shy all of a sudden. That is so silly, this is Spike, the guy against whose back she’s slept these past ten years, who she’s known even longer than that. She’s not gonna be deterred by the British awkwardness Giles has infected the room with. She pushes Spike down on the couch and clambers on his lap.

“So. You happy about the plan, honey?”

Spike slides his hands over her back with a thoughtful expression on his face, one she doesn’t see very often. “I think so. If everything works out as I’ve planned, we’ll be good. Those dodgy wankers at the Magic Department shouldn’t take all week about it, is all. God knows what Willow’s capable of right now if Tara lets her out of the bedroom. Smythe's tactical sense is absolute pants, but I’m not taking over, not leaving you right now.”

Buffy’s s lightly shocked he’s even considered it, but she decides to let it pass. The mission, huh?

“Okay. But please keep me posted on the Willow thing? She used to be my friend, and I care about her. I wanna know everything. And what do you mean, let her out of the bedroom? You think Tara is holding her under some sexual spell?”

Spike shrugs. “Best way to keep a girl like Willow good ‘n occupied, I should say.”

“If you say so. How would you keep a girl like me occupied?”

Thank god, Spike grins and takes her challenge. "Well, for a start, how about like so?”

"I love you, Spike. You know that, don’t you? I make mistakes, I know that, but I never stop loving you."

“I know, sweetheart. Shh. Everything will be alright, you’ll see.”

Chapter 12

Spike has many errands and very small time windows to accomplish them in, that is to say, between feeds if possible. Buffy doesn’t like being left alone and he doesn't like to leave her. Things are both fragile and on the verge of being wonderful again between them, and he wants to enjoy every possible second with Phoenix. Human lives flit by like calendar pages in a forties movie, faster than you can possible track, and he knows he’ll be standing over his son’s grave in a mere eighty years or so. No time to lose.

Fatherhood is an experience the like of which he’s never imagined. The love he holds for Phoenix is fierce and possessive and holds him in a ceaseless grip he’s never known, not even in the early years with Buffy. It’s a mixture of boundless joy and helpless terror, stretching his feelings between these poles like spider silk, gorgeous and complex in the right light, but ephemeral and easy to disperse with one gust of wind. He’s very careful not to let any of this heart-crunching translate to his muscles. The grip he has on the baby is firm, but tender enough to hold a blown egg.

He paces up and down, holding the hot sleepy body of his small son against his shoulder. Every now and then, he stops his tuneless humming to check if Phoenix is asleep already, but every time there’s still a glitter of blue between the dark lashes. Buffy’s long since fallen into the sleep of the exhausted, and he registers the sleepy rhythms of her body as the background music to which he paces. Finally, he senses an infinitesimal slackening in the tiny limbs and he very gently puts the sleeping baby down on the big bed, next to Buffy, safely buffered by a pillow although Phoenix is nowhere near capable of rolling himself over yet. His most beloved people in all the world lie there together, his Slayer’s smooth golden skin next to the crumpled little face of his son.

He takes a last lingering look and slips away silently. Out of here, now. There’s a still a pit of roiling bitter emotion in his belly, and this fettered existence of feeds and sleep hasn’t given him a chance to work off any of it. He needs an outlet, and he doesn’t allow himself to vent any of it on Buffy, although he senses she might welcome it. Running around the block thirty times very fast, or physically exhausting himself hitting the punching bag in their small training room doesn’t do it for him. It needs to be violence. So that makes the choice of which duty to perform first easy.

Therefore, errand the first: Find bloody Bert and bash his bloody face in. Two-faced bastard, scrapping and drinking with him like a proper mate, and then spiking his bloody drink so Willow could work her evil stuff with him out of the way. It's almost flattering in a twisted way, to think he was considered dangerous enough to need to be eliminated.

Spike's traversing tunnels he's only seen once, when he was tearing though them in a blind funk of anger and grief. Silly sod he'd been then. Couldn’t have known fate would have worse things in store for him. Not just the thought of his beloved Slayer shagging another version of him to get pregnant with his child, but actually having to witness the whole terrible spectacle. He almost stuffs the memory back into its dank hiding place, but he changes his mind. He needs it at hand, to call up the anger so he can disperse it. Getting mad is no longer a habit, which, he supposes, says something positive about him and Buffy together. Let’s hope he’ll be able to feel happiness at that thought again.

Ah. He turns a corner and suddenly he hears the unmistakable sound of an English pub, a mixture of darts hitting boards, beer being drawn with exquisite slowness, talking and tinny music. Spike sidles up the door and tries to get a view of the interior without actually entering the pub or giving himself away. It's too dark. He gives up on stealth and enters the bar at full swagger, coat flapping about his ankles.

He walks straight up to the bar, nods to the buxom barmaid and turns around, leaning on his elbows. The sea of plush red-patterned carpeting and flowered upholstery is mercifully obscured by the tightly packed mass of demons, all kinds and all shapes, none of them looking very welcoming.

"Pint of bitter, love," he tells Gertie.

There's rustling and furtive looks all around the pub. They know him. He wishes he could remember more of his interactions with the other demons during his one sojourn here, but booze and emotional turmoil have blurred the edges of his memory.

"Seen Bert around lately?" he asks Gertie, not turning his head away from the assorted customers.

Gertie hesitates. She continues washing a beer glass, but so slowly that Spike knows she's contemplating his question. "What you wanna see him about, then?"

"Got a score to settle with him. If he was a proper bloke he'd own up to it and meet me fair and square," Spike says.

That is all nonsense of course. No such thing as a demon code of honor, but it won’t hurt to try.

Gertie jerks her head. “He’s out back, hiding his sorry self from you.”

Spike’s eyebrows rise but he nods at her and enters the door she indicates. It’s a little storeroom, kegs of beer, jars of pickles and condiments. Bert is sitting on one of the kegs, hunched over miserably, pulling on the last half inch of a hand-rolled cigarette.

“Fuck, Spi-!”

He hasn’t time to get Spike’s full name out before Spike hits him with his balled fist, fuelled by weeks of pent up anger and guilt.

Bert hits a row of shelves with an impressive hollow bang, spread-eagled in an attempt to cushion the impact. Tins and jars clatter to the floor, ringing and shattering with a chaotic salvo of impact sounds.

“Not ‘ere, not ’ere,” Bert gasps. “Take it outside, willya, Gert’ll kill me if we ruin anymore of her storage!”

“I will kill you,” Spike says, but he allows Bert to pick himself up and stumble outside through a wooden door, exiting in a tunnel that leads directly onto a railway line.

Once outside Bert regains some spine and starts defending himself with enough vigor that Spike can really get into it, throwing himself into the punching and kicking, allowing himself to let go of the tight leash he’s been keeping himself on.

“Fucking bastard, ratting me out to the fucking Council? Are you out of your mind, dealing with humans? There's never anything good comes of that and you oughta know it, wide boy like you, not like you haven’t

been around for a coupla centuries, you fucking arsehole! Fucking insane witch nearly killed me and my woman and my spawn. You fucking deserve to die in screaming misery for that, fuckface!”

“Sorry 'bout the spawn, Spike,” Bert gasps and hits Spike in the bollocks with a vicious swipe of his prehensile tail. “Weren't nothing personal. She paid good money, didn’t know you. What would you have done, eh?”

“I don’t rat on people, you slimy tosser, I make my own mischief if I want to! Fucking minion, that's what you are, you’re not even demon enough to do your own evil!”

“Unh, Spike, hng!”

Spike’s methodically hitting Bert in his breath sacs, preventing him from answering. He lets off and kicks him hard below the spine, breaking his tail, and Bert hollers in pain. He manages to twist away and snaps Spike’s wrist, so that now they’re both temporarily handicapped.

“Don’t you go yammerin' 'bout your missus, Spike! Followed you round when you was drugged up. Saw you get picked up by that nice bit of skirt you've got going on the side, didn’t I? Making cow eyes all over you, she was. I’m a one woman man, meself. I don’t hold with all that fucking around you vampires do. Bleeding unnatural, but yeah, you can’t get your wives with spawn, can you? Making offspring with humans, it's disgusting. Not even real demons, you lot are!”

Spike roars in anger and tries to wrench off Bert’s head. “Mind your own business, you braindead dicksplat!”

He changes his mind and bashes Bert's head against the tunnel wall, the blue ichor splattering the wall in a bright glowing arc. “Shut up about my woman! She’s my one and only and you got no business talking about them!”

“Them? What them? There’s just one you said!” Bert says with glee and spits out a few teeth.

“Yeah, and they’re both mine, and you keep your mouth shut about them! I don’t go about badmouthing your wife, do I?”

“Sorry mate,” Bert says and cracks Spike’s head back with a massive headbutt.

Spike ends up with his head inches away from a train rushing by. The flickering illumination from the train’s windows shows Bert trying to pick himself up from the tunnel floor, only to be kicked down by another demon, a big hulking black fellow with spines all over. Where’s he come from all of a sudden? The black guy’s joined by three others like him and they start kicking Bert, their strange crested heads bobbing up and down on the rhythm of their kicking.

Spike rolls over and storms the nearest by rushing into him and bowling him over by sheer speed. “Hands off my mate! I’m the one who's beating him up, you sorry lot of spineless wankers! Hands off of Bert!”

He grabs a few spines, cutting his hands on their filed edges, and breaks them off. The demon howls and while the biting fluid seeping from the cuts burns into Spike, he gets a better grip on the spiny horns jutting out from the guy’s head in place of ears and yanks hard. The whole head comes off and Spike howls in victory and in pain from his wrist. Nothing he hasn’t felt before. Pain is better than remorse.

“Take that and get your bleeding hands off my mate!”

Bert’s regained his footing and is busy killing demon number two. Spike takes on the other pair. His hands are slashed to ribbons from the sharp spines, and his broken wrist isn’t working too well either. He keeps the demons occupied until Bert is done with his designated opponent and then they take on one each. The colors in the dimly lit tunnel seem twice as their normal brightness to Spike, black and red of double intensity, enhanced by danger and violence, spiced by pain. It’s like lancing a boil, a lot of unspeakably nasty stuff comes out, but it’s such a relief when it’s over, pus or no.

Spike breaks his black demon in two and leans against the wall with his good hand, panting and giddy. Bert joins him, using his shoulders, as both his hands are flapping down uselessly and dripping ichor.

“Rain check, Spike? Don’t feel I can put in the sparkle like before,” Bert gasps.

He’s breathing moistly, punctured breath sac, Spike guesses, and he lisps more than before, due to the missing dozen or so needle teeth.

“Let’s make Gertie happy and drink ourselves utterly rat-arsed,” Spike says, and closes his eyes for a moment, to see where the sudden colors in front of him are coming from. Oops. Hit on the head and the eyes, he supposes.

“First one’s on me,“ Bert says as they limp back to the pub through the trashed storeroom.

Gertie’s waiting fro them, arms crossed over her massive bosoms. “Right, lads, and who’s going to pay for my pickled thumbs and the imported Indonesian livers you ruined? Well?”

“We will, Gert,” Bert says meekly. “Pint of your best for me and my mate, love.”

“Men!” Gertie sniffs a huge sniff, making her triple row of massive bosoms quiver alarmingly.

Spike buries his stinging, cut lips into the thick stiff collar of foam Gert has tapped for them. “Aaah. Does a man good, it does. Scrapping, killing, getting pissed. What more could a fellow want?”

Bert nudges him knowingly. “Good shag would be nice, eh? Stagger back to the missus, get her egg sac up your sperm channel?”

Spike imagines this for a few disturbing, yet interesting moments. “It’s a thought, mate. A really good thought, if you change the bits around a little.”

Bert belches comfortably. “There’s nothing a woman won’t forgive you if you give her a good shag, mate. And you lucky bastard, you have to do two make-up bonks. It’s a pity you’re built the wrong way around to have 'em both at once, innit? Having two egg sacs up your thing, that’s a sensation you’ll never forget.”

Spike grins. “I’ll mention it to Buffy. No, on second thought, I won’t.”

He pushes away the unruly thought of having himself and another dimensional Spike doing Buffy both at once. He should have thought of that ten years ago, he reckons. Although, if there are more than two Taras, god knows how many Spikes there could be, scattered over the dimensions. It’s not a good thought after all. No more dimension travel for Buffy. She’s his and only his.

Bert keeps nudging and winking. “Buffy, eh? What’s the other one called? The dark-haired one with the lovely set of jugs?”

Spike is getting annoyed now. “Stop about Dawn, willya? She’s not my woman. She’s my sister-in-law.”

Bert hoots. “Naughty, wicked lad! You been doing your sister-in-law? What does the missus think about that then?”

“I’m not doing my sister in law. That was just once, and it was an accident.”

Bert guffaws and elbows him in the side. From the pain that paralyzes him for a moment Spike deduces he’s got at least one broken rib. “Accident, eh. You just accidental-like fell into her pussy? Good excuse. Hear that, Gert? Spike accidentally fell into his sister in-law’s fanny?”

Gert puts down two more pints in front of them and gives him a derisive frown. “And now you’re sorry, I reckon. Men.”

Spike stares in his beer. “Well, I am. Don’t know how to make it up to her. Don’t want the ladies to fall out over me. Family’s important. Stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Family,“ Bert sighs. “Only got the one brother left from our whole nest, but I know what you mean. The smell of them will always take you back to those brilliant moments in your youth, squabbling over sewer rat, up to your ears in their body odor and shit. My brother and me were the last eggs left. I helped him get his shell off, coz his beak was too short. Always had a soft spot for the silly bugger.” He sighs again. “Like I said, Spike, a woman will forgive you anything if you do her good. She’ll have the memory of the many egg-spurts you gave her and she‘ll look upon you kindly.”

“Um, well, stopped halfway, I suppose. Came to my senses and sent her off.”

Bert stares at him as if he’s growing horns. “You are a daft one, mate, make no mistake. Didn’t finish the job properly? You’re right, you silly sod, she will have your guts for garters.”

Spike’s confused. ”What? Because I saved the both of us from having even more painful memories?”

Gert shakes her head, and her row of bosoms. “Spike, lad, you know bugger all about women, that’s for sure. You have to go back to her and make her realize you’re sorry.”

Spike frowns. “Of course I will. Was planning to all along. Say I’m sorry, give her flowers, and hope she won’t hold it against Buffy.”

“No Spike, you have to make her feel you’re sorry.” Gert winks. “Know what I mean?”

Spike feels his ears glow and an embarrassing mix of emotions does the rounds in his body. He’s not blushing, is he? Vampires don’t blush. “Wouldn’t that make it worse? What would Buffy say?”

“Don’t tell the missus about it, you great galumphing idiot,” Bert says. “She doesn’t have to know how you two made up, right?”

Spike's had enough of this conversation and orders another round. “Say, Bert, what do you do for fun around here?”

Bert’s face goes green with mischief. “Heh. You know what? You put me in mind of an old game us kids used to play with the trains. Drink up and come along.”

“Wait, I need a bottle,” Spike says.

Gert gets him a JD. “Shall I put it on your tab, Spike?”

Spike tries to cover his surprise. She thinks he’ll be back, doesn’t she? It’s nice to feel that he could have had his friendly local right here.

“Sorry, Gert,” he says regretfully. “Gonna go back to Florence. The missus doesn’t much like it here.”

“Too bad, Spike. Look up a taverna called the Spiny Prick in Siena, if you're out that way. About three hundred feet below the big church. Cousin of mine runs it.”

“I will, thanks, Gert.”

“What this game, then?” Spike asks, as Bert and he amble through the tunnels, sharing the JD between them. He’s feeling pleasantly buzzed from the booze and leftover adrenaline, as well as the low sizzling pain in his wounds. A nice meal wouldn’t go amiss, though, make him heal quicker.

Bert grins widely and takes a hefty slug from the bottle, clasped between his wrists because his hands are useless. “I’ll show you. We wait for a train to slow down here and jump on, see? Work our way around to the windows. Don’t forget to put on your real face or it won’t work. And get off when I give the signal, coz the tunnel gets really narrow after a bit.”

“I know,” Spike says. “I’ve ridden the tube once or twice, you git.”

“Really?“ Bert says wistfully. “I’d like do that once. What’s it like?”

Spike shrugs. ”Just…the tube. Filthy, noisy and full of people. You never got on a train in all the time you’ve lived here?”

“Nah,” Bert says. “That’s for humans.”

A fast train flashes by, already slowing down for the curve, and Bert yells to Spike. “This one. Get on the back!”

Spike jumps and scrabbles for a handhold on the dirty butt end of the old carriage. Bert is hanging by his tail and fingernails, face scrunched up from the pain, and jerks his head to the side. “To the windows! Scare the passengers!”

The train sways and lurches, coming perilously close to mysterious bundles of power lines on the tunnel wall, so thickly encrusted with grime that they look to be as old as the tunnels themselves. The wheels shriek with abandon at every possible opportunity and Spike feels drugged by the rhythmic thumping and shaking the carriage does.

It is fun. They shove their scary bleeding demon faces against the carriage windows and growl. The passengers react with gratifying terror, screaming and pointing and stumbling away from them. It’s pretty juvenile, Spike has to agree with that, but it suits his mood perfectly. Playing at being a feckless demon again for a bit, not a care in the world except where to get his next meal and his next bottle. He throws his head back and hollers into the hot smelly tube wind.

*

The latchkey makes its dry snicking sound and Buffy shoots up, fully awake again. What time is it? Spike said he'd be off for a couple of hours, back before the next feed probably. Well, he must have left at about eight, when it was just getting dark, and now it's half past two. Thanks, Spike, just what I needed, a little worry garnish on top of my fun cake of misery and heartbreak. She's half poised to leap off the bed and give him verbal hell, but when her fuzzy brain has woken up and reinstated the memories of the past weeks she sinks back down into the pillows and counts to ten.

Be mellow, smile, forgive. This is not the time to nitpick over his nocturnal habits. Spike's step, now that she's calmed herself down, is kind of uneven and halting. He's hurt.

She’s back in full leap mode and hurries to the door in two silent strides. The hall light catches Spike's bright hair, oddly speckled with dull dark spots. Blood. Spike's leaning against the wall with one hand, swaying on his feet.

"Spike!"

The squeaky alarm in her words annoys her. She forces herself to take another breath and lowers her voice, deepening it to another register,

"Need patching up, honey?"

Spike smiles, and there's blood on his teeth as well. "S not as bad as it looks, Buff. Bit pissed, you know. "

He means drunk, she reminds herself. Great. He might even snore. Maybe the guestroom would be a good place for a drunken, snoring Spike.

She walks up to him and sees his flayed and tattered hands. “Ouch, Spike, your hands. What happened?"

Spike holds them up interestedly, with the exaggerated slow movements of a drunk pretending to be in control. "Well, Bert broke one, and then some kind of demons I never saw before had very sharp shiny spines all over and we had to kill them."

Buffy has no clue what he’s talking about. Isn't Bert the guy who drugged him? Does he mean him when Spike says 'we'?

His body language is loose, with more than just drunkenness. He can hardly stand but he’s seizing her up with his eyes in that smiling, sexy way he used to have before life turned him into a tight, controlled guy, containing his anger and planning detailed capers. Buffy likes this relaxed, swaggering Spike a lot. He slings his arm around her neck and pushes off from the wall. His weight hangs heavily on her but she doesn’t mind. It’s kind of sweet, her woozy Spike leaning on her and trusting her to tend to his wounds and not jostle him or drop him. She can do that. He cops a clumsy feel and sniffs her neck with relish. Oh yeah. This is her wild, reckless boy, who knows he’s sexy and who knows what to do to her.

Buffy lowers him gently onto the bed and he sinks down docilely, giving over the reins completely. She puts Phoenix into the cot next to their bed so she has more room to work with Spike. Their kit with First Aid stuff is well stocked, even though it’s been months since she's gone slaying.

Spike lies very still, his eyes closed and she starts with his face, gently wiping off the blood. It's not as bad as it looks; it must have been a nose bleed mostly. His eyes will blacken and he has a cut on one cheek.

Nothing much for a vampire. Buffy swabs it delicately with disinfectant and Spike relaxes further into the pillow with a deep sigh, obviously enjoying her touches. Buffy's hands tremble. She wants to kiss his lips, sweet and pink again now that she’s wiped off the blood, but she doesn't. There have been scattered moments of intimacy, but it has felt forced and premature so far.

She leans over him and adjusts the lamp so it doesn’t shine into his face anymore. It feels good to be doing this for him, wifely and intimate. She peels off his T-shirt. It's his usual black and won’t show blood or most other stains, but she doesn’t like the demon and cheap Scotch reek that comes off it; so it’s for the bin.

The skin of his chest is cream against the white sheets, unmarked and almost gleaming in the yellow lamplight. Buffy lightly trails her fingers over his side, as if testing for injuries, and Spike sighs deeper, almost moaning. He arches faintly into her hand. Her heart jumps in her throat and sets her pulse hammering. To touch him again after so long, she couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She bends forward to press a kiss on one pink nipple and Spike's hand comes up and grabs her neck through her hair. She feels him twitch when the cut skin touches her but he holds on.

"Buffy…" he says, and his low voice, a little scuffed around the edges from drink and tiredness, reverberates in his chest against her lips. So good.

He sniffs her again and licks her neck over the artery. Secretly Buffy likes this, but Spike tends to do it only when he’s drunk or sleepy, as if not wanting to acknowledge the vampire-ness of this overt tasting.

His hands slide under her pajamas, seeking her breasts, and her breath catches. He better not have any hidden injuries, because she’s rapidly losing interest in caring for them. She tugs off his jeans, seeing him wince, but discovers only bruises and scrapes. His boots. The laces are too tightly knotted and she breaks one in her impatience.

“That’s my girl,” Spike says, laughing in his throat, almost growling. “Hungry for me, are you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says and yanks off his socks.

His feet are pale and perfect and they’re never sweaty. Buffy tickles the soles, knowing that it drives him crazy.

“Get up here, Slayer. There’s other parts of me need attention more than my feet,” Spike says, and she obeys him slowly.

She makes squishy sounds when she moves, she’s that ready for him, and she’d be embarrassed if it wasn’t Spike.

His smile is lustful and lazy and Buffy wonders that one night of fighting and consuming quantities of booze can make this big a change in him. She gets some of it; she’s aching for a good slay, and plans to take off the next night herself. Well, at most she can get in an hour of slaying between feeds, if she takes a cab to the cemetery.

Spike is trying to get her top off with slow, uncoordinated fingers and Buffy lets him, determined not to be hurried about it. He’s so eatable as he’s lying there, creamy skin and reddening member sticking straight up, blue eyes gleaming between half-lowered lashes. In fact, a bruise or two suits him, takes the edge off his perfection. She bends over to his nipple again, deliberately ignoring his needy cock. His growl makes her shiver deep inside and she takes him inside, unable to wait any longer. Spike closes his eyes and quivers from top to toe. He stretches his arms and legs like a cat, before becoming lazy and utterly relaxed again., seemingly content to let her do the riding.

Buffy’s very conscious of her breasts bobbing up and down. They’re heavier than they’ve ever been, full of milk, and Spike’s eyes fasten upon them hungrily. Where his eyes go, his hands follow, and the twisting and pulling he does feels different too, more urgent. She bends over to present one nipple to his mouth and he sucks hard, almost angrily, in weird contrast to his boneless position on the bed. The urgency from his mouth travels through his whole body, and Buffy feels her pleasure doubled. Now he’s tensing his stomach and leg muscles and she cries out when her next thrust hits them. Spike makes a sound deep in his throat and flips her over with such ease and speed that it leaves her breathless. He leans on his wounded hands, leaving red smears on the bedding and pounds her hard.

Buffy starts coming immediately and shifts her legs to get maximum contact against her clit. This is so good, it’s been so long, being taken by her vampire, her wild animal. Automatically she turns her head, presenting

her neck, and then twitches in shock when she realizes what she’s doing. Her skin breaks out in goose bumps and her heart twinges sharply. Don’t think about the other vampire, this is the one she loves, not the one she hated. She doesn’t know if Spike’s noticed, he gives no sign of it, but every now and then bends over to nip her neck. If he wanted to bite her she’d let him, she knows that. She’d have let him long since but he never seemed to want it. Maybe she should ask him one day, because talking, that thing she always forgets to do, talking’s good.

She looks into Spike’s eyes, hazy and dark with approaching orgasm and forces all thoughts out of her mind other than sex, and Spike, and coming now.

“I love you, Spike,” she gasps. Talking’s good.

“Always love you, Buffy,” he forces out between clenched teeth, obviously trying to delay coming.

“Don’t work it, Spike, let it out, it’s all good. There’s time.”

Spike groans into her neck with long, exhausted shudders and then collapses on top of her. He flinches when she grabs his cut hand but doesn’t pull away when she licks the cuts.

Chapter 13

Spike’s footsteps sound loud in the deserted pre-dawn street. It’s deliberate, because definitely still stealthy vamp, and the resulting twitch in one of the shadow porticos gives away the old man’s position. He speeds up, silent now, and slides in neatly next to Giles before the other man can even get an annoyed expression o his face.

“Morning, Giles,” he nods.

“Spike? Didn’t expect you to show up for this. Will you join us afterwards? How’s Buffy today?”

“Utterly enslaved to the puling brat, of course. Hungry little bugger. But I actually got three hours of sleep last night, so, big improvement.”

Giles smiles tightly. From that, Spike knows he’s nervous about all this, because Giles has shown himself a disturbingly frequent visitor, making noises of grandfatherly concern all over Buffy and the baby the past few weeks.

“Everything set?” Spike asks.

Giles seems to be the only one around so far. Giles check his watch. “Andrew and the troops should be coming in just about now,” he says.

As on cue, a double decker tour bus rolls into the street opposite. Spike gasps with laughter. “A bus? You arranged a fucking bus full of witches? Christ. You are taking this seriously, aren’t you?”

Giles makes an abrupt, cutting gesture but ends with putting his angry hands in his pockets. “: I have to, Spike. This is my responsibility. I failed Willow. Not just the first time, but twice, by sending her back to battle the First when she wasn’t done with her training in the coven. I should have ended this before. Instead, I ran way and played at supernatural detective with Andrew. I owe it to Willow and myself to make this better.”

He gets out a pipe and clamps it hard between his teeth. “And you too, Spike. You and Buffy. God knows what you suffered because of Willow's delusions of grandeur.”

“Grandeur? Raving psychosis, I’d have said.”

Spike stares at the pipe. Wasn’t that Andrew’s pipe? Why was Giles smoking it? He decides not to ask. Wrong moment.

The bus disgorges a slew of witches and warlocks of all ages and shapes, Andrew easily recognizable among them. His hair's bleached gold by the Australian sun and he's carefully rewinding another of his Dr. Who scarves around his neck. Bright red and white, this time. Man U colors.

“Spike!“ Andrew squeaks and hugs him tight. “So happy to see you! I promise to visit soon with Australian gifts!”

“Buffy’s knitting you a scarf, actually," Spike says. “A green one.”

Andrew looks panicked for a second and then punches his arm. “Ha! You’re kidding. I knew that. As if Buffy can knit.”

“Motherhood takes people in a weird way,“ Spike says, shaking his head. “Don’t discount the knitting until you’ve actually seen her wrestle with a pair of bootees.” He shivers.

“Really? Bootees?” Andrew grimaces but rallies. “Awesome. Knitting. The picture of happy maternity, huh?”

Spike grins. “Well…”

“Don’t believe a word he’s saying, Andy,” Giles says. “Buffy’s carving him a little stake, actually.”

“Huh.” Andrew eyes him and Gils with the same wariness. “Right. Okay, people, last check. Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do?”

“Surround the block,” one of the witches says

“Wait for your signal,” a warlock grumbles.

“Then slam down n the force field,” the motherly woolly-haired type finishes.

The magic force troops off in the misty pale-gray street. The street lights wink off. Spike checks the sky. “Gotta be off any minute now. Take care, he? It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

The one thing he adores about London is the weather. It’s the only place on earth he can predict the weather with any certainty. Like today; morning haze and chill means a bright spring day, with temperatures in the upper fifties. A mild spring day. For the rest he can't wait to finish up his obligations here and take Buffy and Phoenix out of there, back to Florence.

“Giles?”

“Yes?”

“Some advice?”

“Of course,” Giles nods and Spikes hears the words “I'll never want your advice, Spike” echoing down the years. Things change for the good, sometimes.

“Make it seem you’re taking Tara prisoner as well,” Spike says. “I think she’s the only person in the world Willow trusts. Give her something to hang onto.”

Gils looks at him sharply for a moment. “Yes. I’ll give orders to see to that. You have a pretty high opinion of Tara seventeen, have you?”

“Seventeen,” Spike says. “Christ. You found that out?”

“Yes. The Gatekeepers have brilliant records of everything. They can’t undo the sacrifices, of course, but they have consented to give no dimensional passage to Willow ever again, except on our say-so.”

Spike can’t stop shaking his head. “Seventeen. And we never knew. We really let Willow down, all of us. Se must have thought we didn’t care anymore.”

“That’s one of way of looking at it,” Giles says implacably. “The fifteen Tares she sacrificed might see that differently. With huge power comes huge responsibility. She needs to contained and punished.”

“How? You gonna kill her?”

Giles frowns, “Of course not. That would be too easy on her. No, we’ve arranged for a wonderful Hell…wonderful cloistered little world, which she won’t ever be able to leave unless she learns true humility. And has spent considerable time atoning.”

“What? A private nunnery for Miss Rosenberg? How ironic,” Spike says, smiling in spite of himself.

“You could look at it that way. Or a prison, of course, with a life sentence of community service. Whatever. She’ll pay, don’t worry.”

“If you guys manage to capture her safely, of course."

“We will,“ Giles says. “Don’t underestimate Andrew and his Magic Corps. They’ve got loads of experience assisting slayers all over the world. They’ll get her aright.”

Spike throws down his fag and extinguishes sit with his boot. :”Right. Have to get into the shade now, Rupes. Good luck!”

He hurries off in the direction a small block of shops. The pubs are still closed, of course, but he knows a Paki all-night market with access to the tunnels. He gets a cup of bad coffee form the dispenser and looks on from afar, leaning in the doorpost while he chats with the owner. At first, he can’t see much. There’s a faint ripple at the edge of his extended vampires senses, and then he sees two colorful figures being hauled away, sealed in a magic bubble.

They have to pass him on their way to the bus. Tara’s head lifts, as if she knows someone’s there, but she keeps her grasp on Willow’s hand. Giles comes walking up, stopping to talk to the two women, precisely in front of Spike’s lookout place. Very kind of old Rupes. There’s a bit of a standstill until Andrew comes bounding up.

“Giles, have you said your thing?” Andrew asks blithely, and although Spike can’t hear Willow’s answer, obscured as it is by the magic bubble, he can see every line of body strain and her head bob with the force of the words she’s spitting out.

Tara puts her arm around Willow and strokes her hair. Then she steps away from Willow. The bubble parts for her and closes back in on itself. Willow shrieks soundlessly, her face working, her fists balled. She throws herself at the magic restraints but to no avail. Spike’s sorry for her. He knows that she didn’t start out ‘evil’, which is a pretty dumb catchphrase anyway. He used to be evil, and he’s okay now. Power corrupted Willow, and nobody loved her enough, or was strong enough, to curb her excesses and teach her how to deal with herself. He bites his lip and changes his mind again. Nobody but he himself taught Spike that, when he had enough incentive to go out and get a soul. Who bears the blame for Willow, if not Willow herself? Never mind. He’ll never figure out a definitive answer to that one.

Tara waves at Willow, tears sliding down silently on her face. So this Tara’s not coming to Willow’s place of exile. He can’t blame her, but poor, poor Willow. Maybe Tara will join up with Andrew and Giles, reforming the New Council. He shrugs. Her choice.

He finishes the coffee and makes for the tunnels, without waiting for Giles and Andrew as he promised. He doesn’t particularly want to celebrate their success right now. Besides, he has another obligation to fulfill. He has to go apologize to Dawn.

*

The bell rings. Dawn looks down on the lilac cashmere sweater she’s carefully folding, and then at herself, unbreakfasted and unshowered, still in her oldest jammies and a great big ugly shirt for warmth. Great. She kinda thinks she knows who’s ringing that doorbell, and this is not the get-up she’d like him to see her in. That imagined get-up involved something like killer boots and a whip, and several drinks behind her belt, not flannel and an empty stomach but

The bell rings for the second time, insistent now, and Dawn straightens up from her packing. Her gut tells her this really is Spike, in spite of the daylight hour. She’d prefer to ignore it, but her curiosity and indignation are stronger than her caution. She opens the door and jerks when she sees him, not from surprise but some other emotion she thought she’d left behind.

“Spike.” It comes out dull and hopeless. “What are you doing here? I never wanted to see you again.”

“Came to apologize, bit,” he says.

He looks better than the last time she saw him, when he‘d seemed exhausted and wrung out from all he’d been going through. He’s sleek and well fed, relaxed, a new glow about him, freshly bleached and laundered.

That would be the joys of fatherhood and lots of make-up sex, she assumes. He certainly doesn’t look alike a man who’s been kicked out by his girlfriend because he shagged her sister. That was the one scenario she was still kind of hoping for, but she’s so not gonna ask about him and Buffy.

She could just shut the door in his face and try to forget all about it. Instead, she shuffles aside, just enough to let him pass.

“Apologizing is good, but I can’t see how you could ever make it up to me.” She won’t look him in the eye and her voice sounds flat in her own ears. “You really hurt me, Spike. Making me think for a few moments there was something between us, and then kicking me out. That was really cruel."

"I'm sorry."

There's a silence. Spike runs a hand through his hair, disturbing the neatly gelled waves. She used to do that all the time when she was still a kid, ruining his hair in spite of his protests. It was a running gag between them, back in those halcyon days when Buffy was dead. Oops

"How - how are you physically? I must have hurt you badly. I feel awful about that."

"Physically?" Dawn says. "What do you mean? I had some zipper marks on my legs but that was it. Why do you think you hurt me?"

Spike seems taken aback. "I thought – I bruised your breasts - it's been haunting me."

Dawn gives him a wry grin. "Glad to know some part of me's been haunting you. No, really, you hardly touched me. Which would be worse, I guess."

That just brings back the question of what zone Spike was in when he was fucking her. Those half-heard things he mumbled, the faraway look on his face. Not with her, but she knew that already.

Spike swallows. "Oh."

His eyes rest on her breasts like a hand. It’s a good thing they are hidden beneath the check flannel shirt and her baggy pajamas. Although it might have been nice if she’d been wearing underwear as extra armor. She has a feeling she’s gonna need it.

He shuffles his feet and jams his hands in his pockets.

"Well."

"So," Dawn says, and she feels a spark of something getting hotter and brighter. It’s anger. At least, she hopes it is. "This is it? Apology and goodbye? You made a mistake, Buffy gave you hell, you say sorry and just wanna go on with life and forget about it?"

“Not all of it. Wanted to make it up to you, pet,” he says softly, his face averted.

Dawn’s mind flies to the only kind of making up she’d like him to do to her, but he can’t mean that, can he? She looks at him steadily, until he looks up and the message from his eyes is clear now. She feels herself flush and her hands tremble. She breathes faster but doesn’t make a move, continuing to stare at him. He wouldn’t really.

Spike does one step towards her, but he still keeps his hands in his pockets. It’s up to her to take the gift he offers or not, she guesses.

“Up to you, Dawnie. Just the once, never to be repeated, never to be spoken of. If you think it’ll make it better.”

Dawn laughs harshly. “Are you out of you mind, Spike? A pity fuck from a guy who never wanted me? Just great.”

Spike looks back at her. "Not never, Dawn. Just - choosing to be with Buffy, is all."

Her mouth opens. Her lips are dry. This is lunacy. What gave him this ridiculous notion that she’d want this? That doing her again would make it right?

"Why the sudden honesty? Laying your obligations to rest, so to speak. Not very romantic or appealing."

“At least you know that now, Nibblet,” Spike says. “Makes all the difference. But your choice. I’ll finish what I started, if you want me to. Least I can do.”

Dawn clasps her shaking hands together, so he won’t notice how wigged and excited she is, but then she remembers it’s Spike, the vampire. Who knows everything about her just by the temperature of her skin and her heartrate, and can even smell that she’s creaming her panties right now. If she were wearing any, that is.

Spike shifts his balance to his other foot and holds out his hand, a gesture so sexy and just him that Dawn lets all her carefully nurtured anger and objections fly and takes the offered hand. Her knees are knocking together from arousal, she feels hot and weak and flushed all over. Just one kiss, that won’t be so bad? Just one sweet kiss and then she’ll send him home to Buffy. One kiss because she’s loved him for such a long time, she deserves that, doesn’t she?

Dawn closes her eyes when Spike’s lips touch hers, so she won’t be too overwhelmed by all that blue-eyed beauty, the cheekbones, the all-over hotness, but when she puts her arms around him, she can’t help noticing how taut his ass is, and how big a bulge is prodding into her belly. He’s just so good at this, he tastes like essence of forbidden fruit, tangy and smoky and coppery. Oh Spike.

They’ve landed on her bed, somehow, she must have blanked out for part of the journey there, and she knows she only promised herself one kiss, but technically this is still the first one, right? Their lips haven’t been apart since the first touch and she can’t help herself, she keeps eating those lips, that tongue, even his teeth and his gums need to be tasted, explored.

Her jammies don’t put up much of a struggle and Dawn cries out when he sucks at her nipples and nips at the underside of her breasts. This is just like she dreamed, not the other time, which as a little bit too scary and rough, this is just right. Spike licks his way down her belly, and she’s sodden down there, embarrassingly so, but Spike doesn’t seem to think that’s wrong at all. He shoves a few fingers inside her and licks them off. The look on his face that makes her heart do flip flops, cartwheeling backwards and forwards and she could probably walk up walls and do somersaults too.

The sensations keep tumbling over one another, cool tongue on her clit, cold fingers twisting her nipple, rough curls against the palm of her hand. Vaguely far away a button on her shirt presses into her back, a stripe of sunlight on the carpet points its finger towards her warningly.

He looks up to her, eyes veiled, pink lips shiny with her juices. Dawn’s heart is drawn upwards and lodges in her throat. It hurts. His look is full of love and a kind of surrender, and she could so take him right now. She knows with sudden clarity she could have him. She has the power to take something away from him right now, and he’d never get it back. She could own him, or an even bigger piece than she already owns. He wouldn’t leave Buffy, not immediately, but they could have a thing for the rest of their lives, sneaking off at weddings and Christmas to have their secret fucks, sneaky phone calls, lewd e-mails.

The attraction of this power is overwhelming. Spike can’t say no to her, no more than he can to Buffy or anyone he truly loves. He loves so well, this vampire, but not very wisely. Wise would have been not to go near her, not to love her against his best intentions.

It’s clear that she is much wiser than this man who's a hundred years her senior, who falls headlong into traps of love and has no clue how to get out of them. She doesn’t want to be the wiser, she definitely doesn’t, she wants to be overwhelmed and seduced and loved, but for some strange reason her decision is suddenly made. She hates herself with a passion at this moment, hates the clear level-headedness that makes her see all this when she’d prefer to dive into a sea of swirling emotion. Bah. She’s a better person than she thought she was.

Dawn sits up and gently pushes Spike away.

“Spike.”

He looks back, his eyes still dazed with longing, but he gets the message pretty quick. He shakes his head like a dog and rocks back on his heels.

“Dawn, I...”

“Spike, I love you and always will, but we can’t do this. This is just not right. I really appreciate the thought, that was so very sweet of you, but I can’t do this to you or Buffy. Or myself.”

Spike nods. “Okay. You’re right. Yeah. I’ll go.”

He doesn’t, he stays put, balancing on his heels and looking kicked and confused. She’s gonna have to be a little more direct. She pulls down her pajama top and buttons up her tartan shirt.

“Spike, come.”

He follows her dazedly to the living room and stands forlornly, hands dangling at his side. Dawn’s getting impatient. Can’t he go already? It’s hard enough without him standing there all temptingly ruffled and his wits hanging out of his ears.

“Spike. Go away. Go to Buffy. I’ll give you guys a call in a couple of months, okay?”

Spike’s eyes focus sharply and he’s back to being himself. Dawn practically pushes him out of the door. She pretends she doesn’t see his look of relief.

“Dawn. Thank you,” he says, and kisses her cheek.

“Yeah, it’s cool. Go now. What’s my nephew called?” she says, in a big hurry to have him out of her house. She‘s not going to be able to keep it together much longer.

“Phoenix!” Spike shouts through the gap of the door closing.

So very So Cal. Dawn giggles, at least they start out that way, but they turn into sobs. She runs into the bedroom and buries her head under the pillow, wishing hard at Spike to leave, to be somewhere in a tunnel already, far way so he can’t hear her cry.

*

Buffy’s lazily splayed out on the bed, still in her silk robe. A new one, red and salmon, since the old one has too many terrible memories of the week with the other Spike. She’s gained weight, looking sleeker than he’s ever seen her since the first time he spotted her on the dance floor long ago, when she was seventeen years old, flush with her new found sexual powers. She’s glowing and content at the moment, with less slaying urge than when she was pregnant, although she’s been making some noises about getting back to it.

If anyone’s earned some lazing about after seventeen years of unceasing slaying it’s her. Spike thinks it’s the breastfeeding that’s making her so logy and sluggish and privately, he thinks she should go on with it for a long time yet.

He can’t get enough of her hot full flesh and her lazy greediness for his body. His favorite is fucking her from behind or licking her while she breastfeeds. At first she was embarrassed about her heightened sensuality at that time, feeling it took way from Phoenix, but Spike has convinced her that the baby’s never happier suckling than when his mother is utterly relaxed and enjoying herself.

Phoenix is lying next to Buffy, sleeping the sleep of the innocent and the utterly full of belly, a trickle of milk he’s possetted up drying on his plump pink cheek. Spike can’t resist giving him a quick peck and a sniff, just to feel the silky softness of his skin under his lips and smell his milky baby smell.

He opens up Buffy’s robe and takes her in as she lies there, amused and proud under his hungry gaze. Her breasts are full and ripe, the nipples and areolas dark and distended.

“Slayer, you’re my ripe wicked...” he takes her breast in his mouth and strokes the underside with his thumb. Buffy half-closes her eyes like a cat. If Slayers could purr, she would.

He opens her willing legs and glories in the sight of her pussy, already swollen and sweet for him He teases the dark pink folds open, glistening and full. The tremors in her thighs and the quickening of her breath confirm that she’s there with him. A hand slides up his belly with teasing slowness and tweaks his nipple. He arches his back and shudders. Together they slip him out of his suddenly chafing and unnecessary clothes.

Before Buffy allows his straining needy cock to enter her she puts a pillow next to Phoenix’ head, so that he won’t catch an inadvertent glimpse of his parents having happy sweaty sex. Spike thinks this is nonsense, but

if this is the last bastion of her American prudishness it’s fine with him. Her cunt grips him with its velvet glove; the steel beneath it is growing stronger again every day, due to diligent exercise, mostly with Spike’s more than willing cooperation.

There’s no hurry, no urgency, and Spike loses all sense of time while he languidly slides in and out of Buffy’s hot cunt. Her orgasms follow one another like little earthquakes, slowly climbing up the Richter scale until he decides he has to come right now and speeds up to a fast and frenzied finale, hearing his own involuntary shout echoed in Buffy’s surprised screams.

“Well, that was...unexpected,” she says, stroking his neck as he lies limp and spent over her warm buttery curves. “Were you extra glad to see me?”

Spike licks some salt off her neck. “Yeah. I guess. I know I am. Seeing Willow and Tara this morning was sad. Brought home to me how lucky we are, how well things ended. Phoenix. You ’n me still together. Could have gone wrong in so many ways.”

“What about…what about your other errand this morning?” she says, the tremor in her voice audible only to him.

“Dawn? I was just in time to catch her before left. She was packing up all her stuff.”

“Is she okay?”

He nods. “Yeah. Said she was looking forward to picking up her life again.”

Buffy’s silent but he senses all kinds of feelings milling around in her brain.

“You gonna call her sometime?” he asks.

Buffy bites her lip. “I guess. Not yet, I still get really weirded out when I think of her.”

“Yeah.”

Spike tries not to think of what else happened this morning but his cock stiffens shamefully inside Buffy. He did it for Dawn, but there’s some part of him, kept hidden for years, that got off on it. He can never tell Buffy. He doesn’t want to. He did it to close the book between him and Dawn. It was compassionate, but perhaps not wise. He's never been about wise, has he, and he can accept that, but he doesn’t ever want to hurt Buffy. They’ve hurt each other enough. They have their son now, who means another kind of immortality for him and a means of longed-for normality for Buffy. He’s both glad and sorry Dawn put a halt to it, but he knows what his intentions were, and for Buffy it wouldn’t matter that he didn’t go through with it.

Fortune has favored them, although she has a nasty crooked way o f going about it.

Buffy smiles at him. “Our last night in England. Let’s make it good one, honey.”

Spike grins and nips at the tender place beneath her ear.

“As ever your willing slave, madam.”

END