Fic: The Soul Lies Down (2/?)
Title: The Soul Lies Down (2/?)
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~3,800 this chapter (~5,000 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to Angearia's Fin Amour)
Notes: I'm posting this here, now, in the hopes of gaining some momentum with the next chapter. I'm currently going through IVF and it's sapping my energy so that writing has slowed to a snail's pace. I'm also hoping to connect with what's left of the LJ spuffy crowd, so if you're out there *waves frantically* HI! If there's anywhere I can pimp, please let me know :) You can also read this story on Elysian Fields if you prefer that format. I will upload to AO3 when it's complete. Many thanks to Yavannie82 and Angearia for beta work, ETA: and massive thanks to Bewildered for the retrospective beta <3
2
There is a Field
I barely remember my mother. There are pictures of course, some original, some stored in the electronic ether by Willow before the fall of Sunnydale. There’s a letter in my pocket. There are more stories than I know how to count.
Buffy Summers, not the first Chosen One, not by a long shot, but the first of a new generation. They built a statue of her in the new Council headquarters. They all say she would have hated it - all my aunts and uncles - but the girls wanted it and it’s a democracy now (too late to get nostalgic for the old days, I’m sorry guys.) They stand under it and speak her name in hushed and reverent voices, building her mythos like a cathedral.
They say she killed the Master in single combat less than a year after she’d been called; that four years after that she defeated a god with her bare hands.
They say that her reach was mighty and the great demon lords shuddered at the sound of her name.
They say she inspired such love that Angelus came to the side of light; that William the Bloody won his soul back for her.
They say she strode into battle with her newborn babe tied snug to her body, knowing that Death was among her conquered foes.
Sorting the fact from fiction becomes inevitably optional after a certain passage of time, though the records of her tenure are, in fact, meticulous. For example, I think she took me patrolling a couple of times in those first overwhelming days before she learned to put me down, zipped up secure and barely visible in the sling beneath her jacket. William the Bloody died soulless, however, though the question of his motives in sacrificing himself remains controversial. How can one love without a soul? Love that is unselfish, and untainted by vampiric obsession. Fin’amour as the poets say: fine love. Because obviously these things are mutually exclusive. Any human can see that (don’t you listen to them, Dawnie, he loved her more than his own existence, nothing they say will ever change that fact.)
(God, Anya, thank you thank you thank you.)
The question remains, am I human? Before I was born, my mother didn’t think so. Afterwards, who can say, ever tight-lipped on matters of emotional inexactitude as she was? I barely remember her. I didn’t get the chance to know her at all. Everyone else has their opinion, but…
As with Spike, the wayward vampire knight errant, the jury is still out on that one.
*
Once Glory’s gone it’s the work of a moment to scramble back down into the ditch and gather up the vampire’s broken form. I inherited my grandmother’s height, but not my mother’s strength, so the best I can do is raise his torso into my lap, one arm wrapped secure across his mangled chest, the other reaching tremblingly for the severed forearm.
It’s remarkably hard to kill a vampire. Even now, destroyed as he is, if my aunts and uncles had only come a little sooner he might have lived the first time around. No matter, no time for misplaced anger (grief). Somewhere nearby my mother lies incapacitated, hoping blindly that the approaching footsteps are his, and isn’t it interesting the faith it requires to believe he would come through something like this still standing? Her light bulb moment has yet to roll over her, however. (I’ll take him to see it later, though, I promise - how can he not deserve it after this?)
Parts (yech) all accounted for, I slide him out. The only shock is how easy it is, this newfound key-skill. One moment, we’re in a sandy ditch filled with bloody corpses and the remains of a fire, and before the t of ‘tick’ on the second hand of the universe, we’re in a field, beneath a tent, white linen flapping gently in the breeze.
Once I realized what had to be done, I got prepared - I wasn’t raised by watchers, witches and ex-demons for nothing. So everything I need is already here and I get to work, cleaning sand and grit from gaping wounds as best I can, taping the severed arm back together nice and snug. I’ve got more field experience than any other non-slayer my age but still I have no doubt that if the world hadn’t already ended today I’d have vomited twice by now into the nearest available bucket. Somehow the final, genuine, honest-to-god apocalypse can’t help but dull one’s sense of horror.
It’s a relief to focus on lifting flaps of meat sliced clean to the bone to wash away the desert with saline. Cleaned, he can heal. Healed, he can save us all.
At least, that’s the plan.
Time has no meaning in the field, in our tent. Outside, I know the blue sky is scattered with fluffy little clouds, the air mild and fresh, wildflowers waving lazily amidst the grass. These things won’t change, no passage of the sun or fall of night in our little pocket of reality. How nice it will be for him, I think, to sit outside once healed and feel daylight on his skin. I thought of that, in the preparation.
With no temporal flow to consider, my task is done when it’s done, and whenever that is I pull a crisp white sheet up to the waist of this extraordinary yet very naked stranger, because even demons deserve dignity in repose. (Uncle Xander, I love you, but this one you’ll never win.)
All that remains now is to feed him. And I have supplies stored safely for when he’s ready. But first things first. Blood calls to blood.
I slice a shallow cut into my arm, in a neat line with a scalpel so sharp I barely feel it. My blood ticks slow but steady past his parted lips. He’s unmoving as a corpse and though clean, remains an utter disaster of flesh, but it’s remarkably hard to kill a vampire, and this one saved my life. Even through this tortured stillness, he’ll smell it, sense it, swallow it somehow. Latch on to my wrist so weakly even I can break the hold once I’ve given what I can.
Then, it’s patience and waiting.
*
But my life began in mixed up magicks, violence and love, suffering and blood - I don’t do well with inactivity. Besides, what with the apocalypse and the death and the world-ending horror, I haven’t had the opportunity to just play with my cool new abilities.
I barely remember my mother.
I want to see it all.
That’s how I end up in the skankiest warehouse I’ve seen for a long time, faded out of view as I watch two vamps in their squalid nest running in fear from her as she bursts in on them. She is, I am thrilled to find, just as impressive as my daydreams. I used to playact at being her when I was still little enough for such fantasies to be fun instead of painful. Auntie Anya would gloss my lips shiny red and I’d tie my wooden sword around my waist and jump out at customers to slay them or save the day as the mood struck me. It used to drive Andrew batshit because he never stopped being nervy around weapons.
I never did it in front of Uncle Xander.
Now I watch as my mother tosses her golden hair and smarts off at the figure coming up beside her, my vampire savior. Buffy and Spike. They look so young, it’s easier to call them by their names (am I older than my own mother? How twisted is that?)
He opens the door for her. It’s a little surprising, given their less than warm exchange. I thought I had come earlier. Moving around them I try to scrutinize Buffy in the near dark - her petite frame in the loose, drapey top and slightly oversize jacket. Now I’m looking, I see the shadowed thickening at her waist. Not that early, then.
Spike’s abnormal chivalry surprises her too, and she turns back to him, annoyance mounting. “What are you doing?”
I knew this. I knew they fought a lot, knew their friendship was as strange and nascent as the bump Buffy is still trying to hide from the world. I was raised, after all, by Anya Harris, pragmatist extraordinaire. But there are (were, oh god) still people in my life who hated Spike (sorry, Uncle Xander) or whose memories seemed tinted by the romance of the story (sorry, Auntie Willow) and anyway truth is stranger than fiction, nine times out of ten. Still, I don’t know how to feel about the way this scene is unspooling before me, the human awkwardness of a moment that will lead to a soulless vampire dying in a desert for me, for her.
“Is this a date?” Buffy asks, face screwed up in disgust.
“A-please. A date! You are completely off your bird. I mean, do you want it to be?”
And it’s hard to watch, because Buffy looks as though she’s going to be sick and this is closer to Xander’s version of events than Willow’s on the great cosmic teeter-totter of misinformation and half-truths.
“Oh… oh god. Oh… oh no.”
Concern chases hurt across Spike’s face, genuine despite the creepiness of the situation, and he takes a step in her direction. “Not coming over all queasy again are you, Slayer? Thought we were done with the holding-your-hair-back part of patrol last month.”
“The only thing making me queasy is you, Spike. Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s not so unusual. Two people in the workplace, feelings develop.”
“No. No, no feelings do not develop! No feelings!”
And they argue. They argue like breathing. Their eyes shine with emotions at least one of them isn’t supposed to feel (and who knows about Buffy? She’s protesting awfully hard.) Their voices rise and fall like a dance, like a fight, and sudden yearning grips me, for all those times I never heard the same cadence through the floor of my bedroom as a child.
“You are missing the point,” Spike says, pained. “This is real here. I lo-”
“Don’t! Don’t say it.”
She hardly ever let him say it, and I think she regretted that in the end. There’s a letter in my pocket, fifteen years old now and all I’ve got left aside from the voices in my head. She never expressed herself well, my mother, but I’ve managed to piece that much together. So I slide again, because now I need to hear it too, and then it’s later that evening and Drusilla has a cattle prod.
*
Buffy falls to the crypt floor in an ungainly heap, scraping against a sarcophagus on the way down, crying out in pain. I can’t help the gasp that leaves my mouth at the casual, violent pleasure on Drusilla’s face, the dangerous look on Spike’s, but I’m faded so it’s not like they can hear me. (Are you surprised, honey? It’s not like you’ve never dealt with vampires before.) Immediately, Buffy’s hand comes across her stomach and she looks up, grimacing, shock and desperate pleading in her eyes. The naked emotion brings Spike up short, but only draws Drusilla closer.
“No,” Buffy grunts as Drusilla bends at the waist wielding the cattle prod again, pale face grinning like a skull in the gloom. “Spike, please!”
And his expression is surprised - astonished - but resolute as, faster than my eyes can follow, he disarms Dru and turns the weapon back on her. She falls backwards, unconscious, as he drops forwards to Buffy’s side, dark and light splitting down the middle.
After the flurry of activity, the rooms stills to nothing but their breathing (why does he breathe?)
(Too stupid to realize he doesn’t have to would be my guess, Dawnie, he never was the sharpest tool in the shed.)
Spike takes Buffy in with his head cocked slightly to one side. She’s slumped inelegantly against the sarcophagus, coat splayed out wide, the soft jersey of her loose top now lying smoothly over the small, neat mound of her belly, and he reaches out as though to touch her, the motion aborted when she flinches back warily. I can almost see that demonic hearing tuning in, see the moment he suddenly hears the faint, rapid pitta-pat of the baby’s heart for the first time. Their eyes lock and for a moment Buffy looks as though she’s drinking in his expression of confusion and delight.
“So,” he says hoarsely after long, silent moments in which they just stare at each other and breathe. “Not soldier boy’s, I take it?”
“Emphatically not,” Buffy mutters, grimacing again. Her boyfriend left her. I remember that now. Because I wasn’t his; because I would need her. She frowns up at Spike. “Why are you…? Are you…?”
He’s smiling. Smiling like he can’t help himself.
I thought I was ready for this moment, but I never could have been.
“What? It’s good news, innit? Babies, puppies, kittens, rainbows, all that stuff that makes you goody-goodies happy.” Slowly, he reaches out again and this time he does touch her, this time she doesn’t shy away. “I can hear her little heart fluttering.” The baby kicks and his smile breaks out into a huge, silly grin.
Gone is the cold, dangerous killer of less than a minute ago. The transformation is mercurial, remarkable.
“How do you know it’s a her?” Buffy asks quietly, eyes never leaving his face as he gazes at his hand on her stomach in wonder.
(Blood calls to blood.)
“Always did have a soft spot for Summers women,” he replies, grin softening. The moment is broken when Buffy finally looks away, eyes falling to the cattle prod Spike still holds in his free hand. Following her gaze, horror dawns in his eyes. “Oh, Christ,” he croaks, rearing back on his knees. “She’s okay, I can hear she’s okay,” he says, stricken, looking to Buffy for some kind of acknowledgement, but before she can even haul herself up into a sitting position, he’s spun and staked Dru’s prone form, not even waiting to watch the dust settle before he’s once more at her side. “Buffy, love, I’m sorry, I never meant-”
“Oh save it, Spike,” Buffy sighs, impatient. “And help me up.”
“Look, can I get you something? Some water?” he asks as he offers her his hand, met with a glare that speaks volumes, though as she turns to leave, it’s clear that Buffy’s legs are more jello-like than leg-like. “You should see a doctor, pet. At least let me walk you home.”
Leaning heavily on the sarcophagus lid while trying to look like she isn’t, Buffy lets out a breath born of deep exasperation. “You just don’t ever stop, do you? I thought I made it clear earlier - this? Never going to happen. I would have thought-”
He’s watching her carefully. “Thought what?” She’s clammed up, but one thing I have already gleaned about these two; they can’t help but push and prick and needle at each other. “Thought what, Slayer?” He bullies her with his proximity until, with surprising resignation, she just gives in.
“Especially now…” she gestures down to her belly, one hand coming to rest beneath her bump in the universal symbol for ‘look how pregnant I am.’ She’s so tough, my mother. So strong. Everyone who’s ever known her has told me that, and I see it here, now. But I also see a small woman with large green eyes that are suddenly shining in the candlelight with a girlish vulnerability that makes me ache for her, makes me smile. Makes me love her as more than an idea.
“Oh, what,” Spike scoffs, “you think because Captain Cardboard got scared away, that’s enough to put me off too? Bloody hell, woman, I love you.”
There. There it is. The hinge my fate will turn on. My breath catches with his sincerity.
Buffy looks away, but Spike takes her chin in his hand (black chipped nail polish, just like on his severed hand.) “Hey, no, look at me. I love you.” Again, oh. “You’re all I bloody think about. Dream about. You’re in my gut, in my throat. I’m drowning in you, Summers, I’m drowning in you. No little bit can change that.” They just stare at each other for a moment, and I stare too, hypnotized. “You can’t tell me that there isn’t anything there between you and me, I know you feel something.”
Buffy’s face scrunches up as she bats his hand away from her, harder than is really necessary. “It’s called revulsion.”
He smirks. “No, love, that’s just the morning sickness.”
I remember his earlier jibe about holding her hair back. How she must resent him, taking the role from which her boyfriend fled.
“Whatever you think you’re feeling, it’s not love,” she spits, riled. “You can’t love without a soul.”
“Can.” He grits his teeth, abruptly at the end of his patience. “Do. Bloody women!” He throws his hands up as he paces away. “I just staked my sire, what more proof do you need? What the bleeding hell does it take, Slayer? You’ve already destroyed everything that’s me until all that’s left is you in a dead shell. It’s wrong, I know it. I’m not a complete idiot. Just can’t seem to help myself.” He returns, softening just as suddenly, gesturing at her bump, “So I’ll probably love her too. Just because it’s you.” Draws a shaky, helpless breath and mutters, a touch resentfully, “Probably already do.”
And that seems to hit a nerve or work something loose, because: “It’s a magic baby,” Buffy blurts. “Strong mystical… energy fetus. There were these monks, and… they said I have to protect it. I… I have to… and Glory…” Tears well up. “It feels so wrong.”
“You don’t know the bloody half of it,” Spike mutters.
“It doesn’t feel like mine.”
It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay because she’ll love me later. (Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt now.)
His eyes have dropped once more to her belly. “But you’re keeping her, though. Aren’t you, Slayer? Not gonna flush bite-sized there down the chute?”
“Spike, I’m five months,” she says tiredly. “I was already a month gone by the time they bothered to let me know, and it’s not like this was even supposed to happen. The time for that decision has come and gone.”
He looks relieved, and she looks as though she can’t begin to fathom his reaction.
“I hate magic,” she says, sagging. She looks so young. Spike takes a step closer and it almost seems like he’s going to embrace her - that she might allow him to - when she notices the red smear in the corner of his mouth.
“Is that human blood? Have you been feeding?” And all the earlier revulsion is back.
“No! I mean, Drusilla-”
“Ugh.” Buffy whomps him square in the nose, and he goes sprawling across the crypt. Her hair flies over her shoulder as she storms off. I follow her, jogging to keep up despite my extra inches. A couple minutes later, having cleaned himself up, Spike’s in the same predicament.
“Buffy!” he calls down the sidewalk. “Come on now, stop! You can’t just walk away from this.”
“What part of punching you in the face did you not understand?”
“So we had a fight, it’s not our first, love-”
She spins on him, furious. “Spike, you’ve fed. On a human. Maybe more than one and I will stake you where you stand if you don’t back off.” There’s nothing he can say, so he stops, hands up in a gesture of peace. “I want you out. I want you out of this town. I want you off this planet!”
“No, it’s not that easy. We have something, Buffy.”
“No, Spike, I have something, and in four months from now it’s going to be a baby.” (In fact I came a month early on top of everything else.) She stops, breathing hard, turns her back on him. “And I have to protect it from a hellgod, who wants to grind its bones to make her bread. I don’t have time for your games or your… your delusions.”
He’s standing just behind her left shoulder. His face…
Quietly, he says, “Then tell me what to do.”
She closes her eyes, unable to bring herself to ask. I don’t blame her, after the full spectrum from creepiness to adoration Spike has shown her tonight. Oh, but she can’t see his face.
“Protection? Help patrolling? Tell me what you need, pet.”
So softly it’s barely audible, she tells him, “I need to be able to trust you.” A slow, deep breath. “You get a bye this round, for staking Drusilla, I know she would have had to kill your little snack for you earlier.” She shudders, looking pale. “Lucky for you the current benefits of another strong fighter on my side outweigh the very great satisfaction I would otherwise take in pinning you out on top of your crypt and waiting for the sun to rise.”
“Oh, Slayer, careful,” he purrs. “Talk like that, you’ll get a man all worked up.”
“Not a man,” she mutters, starting off again, continuing on to home.
“Got me there,” he says, drawing level. “But I want to be, for you.”
She glances up at him, expression hard to read. “I’m tired,” is all she says as they round the corner onto Revello Drive. “Go home.”
“Right,” Spike says, coming up short at her dismissal. “So you’ll call when you need me?”
“You don’t have a phone,” she says, before closing the door in his face.
I wait outside with him this time, watching. His face is so open with emotion. I didn’t get that before, in the tent. (Don’t be ridiculous, Dawnie, of course you didn’t.) He’s happy, amused, more than a little angry, but despite their heated exchanges since Buffy’s revelation, I can still see the soft light in his eyes that first appeared when he realized what it meant. Realized I was there, and hers, and that he loved me just as helplessly.
It’s that thought that carries me back to the tent in the field with the gentle breeze and rustle of meadow grass.
When I get there, he’s awake.
Chapter Index | Next
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~3,800 this chapter (~5,000 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to Angearia's Fin Amour)
Notes: I'm posting this here, now, in the hopes of gaining some momentum with the next chapter. I'm currently going through IVF and it's sapping my energy so that writing has slowed to a snail's pace. I'm also hoping to connect with what's left of the LJ spuffy crowd, so if you're out there *waves frantically* HI! If there's anywhere I can pimp, please let me know :) You can also read this story on Elysian Fields if you prefer that format. I will upload to AO3 when it's complete. Many thanks to Yavannie82 and Angearia for beta work, ETA: and massive thanks to Bewildered for the retrospective beta <3
2
There is a Field
I barely remember my mother. There are pictures of course, some original, some stored in the electronic ether by Willow before the fall of Sunnydale. There’s a letter in my pocket. There are more stories than I know how to count.
Buffy Summers, not the first Chosen One, not by a long shot, but the first of a new generation. They built a statue of her in the new Council headquarters. They all say she would have hated it - all my aunts and uncles - but the girls wanted it and it’s a democracy now (too late to get nostalgic for the old days, I’m sorry guys.) They stand under it and speak her name in hushed and reverent voices, building her mythos like a cathedral.
They say she killed the Master in single combat less than a year after she’d been called; that four years after that she defeated a god with her bare hands.
They say that her reach was mighty and the great demon lords shuddered at the sound of her name.
They say she inspired such love that Angelus came to the side of light; that William the Bloody won his soul back for her.
They say she strode into battle with her newborn babe tied snug to her body, knowing that Death was among her conquered foes.
Sorting the fact from fiction becomes inevitably optional after a certain passage of time, though the records of her tenure are, in fact, meticulous. For example, I think she took me patrolling a couple of times in those first overwhelming days before she learned to put me down, zipped up secure and barely visible in the sling beneath her jacket. William the Bloody died soulless, however, though the question of his motives in sacrificing himself remains controversial. How can one love without a soul? Love that is unselfish, and untainted by vampiric obsession. Fin’amour as the poets say: fine love. Because obviously these things are mutually exclusive. Any human can see that (don’t you listen to them, Dawnie, he loved her more than his own existence, nothing they say will ever change that fact.)
(God, Anya, thank you thank you thank you.)
The question remains, am I human? Before I was born, my mother didn’t think so. Afterwards, who can say, ever tight-lipped on matters of emotional inexactitude as she was? I barely remember her. I didn’t get the chance to know her at all. Everyone else has their opinion, but…
As with Spike, the wayward vampire knight errant, the jury is still out on that one.
*
Once Glory’s gone it’s the work of a moment to scramble back down into the ditch and gather up the vampire’s broken form. I inherited my grandmother’s height, but not my mother’s strength, so the best I can do is raise his torso into my lap, one arm wrapped secure across his mangled chest, the other reaching tremblingly for the severed forearm.
It’s remarkably hard to kill a vampire. Even now, destroyed as he is, if my aunts and uncles had only come a little sooner he might have lived the first time around. No matter, no time for misplaced anger (grief). Somewhere nearby my mother lies incapacitated, hoping blindly that the approaching footsteps are his, and isn’t it interesting the faith it requires to believe he would come through something like this still standing? Her light bulb moment has yet to roll over her, however. (I’ll take him to see it later, though, I promise - how can he not deserve it after this?)
Parts (yech) all accounted for, I slide him out. The only shock is how easy it is, this newfound key-skill. One moment, we’re in a sandy ditch filled with bloody corpses and the remains of a fire, and before the t of ‘tick’ on the second hand of the universe, we’re in a field, beneath a tent, white linen flapping gently in the breeze.
Once I realized what had to be done, I got prepared - I wasn’t raised by watchers, witches and ex-demons for nothing. So everything I need is already here and I get to work, cleaning sand and grit from gaping wounds as best I can, taping the severed arm back together nice and snug. I’ve got more field experience than any other non-slayer my age but still I have no doubt that if the world hadn’t already ended today I’d have vomited twice by now into the nearest available bucket. Somehow the final, genuine, honest-to-god apocalypse can’t help but dull one’s sense of horror.
It’s a relief to focus on lifting flaps of meat sliced clean to the bone to wash away the desert with saline. Cleaned, he can heal. Healed, he can save us all.
At least, that’s the plan.
Time has no meaning in the field, in our tent. Outside, I know the blue sky is scattered with fluffy little clouds, the air mild and fresh, wildflowers waving lazily amidst the grass. These things won’t change, no passage of the sun or fall of night in our little pocket of reality. How nice it will be for him, I think, to sit outside once healed and feel daylight on his skin. I thought of that, in the preparation.
With no temporal flow to consider, my task is done when it’s done, and whenever that is I pull a crisp white sheet up to the waist of this extraordinary yet very naked stranger, because even demons deserve dignity in repose. (Uncle Xander, I love you, but this one you’ll never win.)
All that remains now is to feed him. And I have supplies stored safely for when he’s ready. But first things first. Blood calls to blood.
I slice a shallow cut into my arm, in a neat line with a scalpel so sharp I barely feel it. My blood ticks slow but steady past his parted lips. He’s unmoving as a corpse and though clean, remains an utter disaster of flesh, but it’s remarkably hard to kill a vampire, and this one saved my life. Even through this tortured stillness, he’ll smell it, sense it, swallow it somehow. Latch on to my wrist so weakly even I can break the hold once I’ve given what I can.
Then, it’s patience and waiting.
*
But my life began in mixed up magicks, violence and love, suffering and blood - I don’t do well with inactivity. Besides, what with the apocalypse and the death and the world-ending horror, I haven’t had the opportunity to just play with my cool new abilities.
I barely remember my mother.
I want to see it all.
That’s how I end up in the skankiest warehouse I’ve seen for a long time, faded out of view as I watch two vamps in their squalid nest running in fear from her as she bursts in on them. She is, I am thrilled to find, just as impressive as my daydreams. I used to playact at being her when I was still little enough for such fantasies to be fun instead of painful. Auntie Anya would gloss my lips shiny red and I’d tie my wooden sword around my waist and jump out at customers to slay them or save the day as the mood struck me. It used to drive Andrew batshit because he never stopped being nervy around weapons.
I never did it in front of Uncle Xander.
Now I watch as my mother tosses her golden hair and smarts off at the figure coming up beside her, my vampire savior. Buffy and Spike. They look so young, it’s easier to call them by their names (am I older than my own mother? How twisted is that?)
He opens the door for her. It’s a little surprising, given their less than warm exchange. I thought I had come earlier. Moving around them I try to scrutinize Buffy in the near dark - her petite frame in the loose, drapey top and slightly oversize jacket. Now I’m looking, I see the shadowed thickening at her waist. Not that early, then.
Spike’s abnormal chivalry surprises her too, and she turns back to him, annoyance mounting. “What are you doing?”
I knew this. I knew they fought a lot, knew their friendship was as strange and nascent as the bump Buffy is still trying to hide from the world. I was raised, after all, by Anya Harris, pragmatist extraordinaire. But there are (were, oh god) still people in my life who hated Spike (sorry, Uncle Xander) or whose memories seemed tinted by the romance of the story (sorry, Auntie Willow) and anyway truth is stranger than fiction, nine times out of ten. Still, I don’t know how to feel about the way this scene is unspooling before me, the human awkwardness of a moment that will lead to a soulless vampire dying in a desert for me, for her.
“Is this a date?” Buffy asks, face screwed up in disgust.
“A-please. A date! You are completely off your bird. I mean, do you want it to be?”
And it’s hard to watch, because Buffy looks as though she’s going to be sick and this is closer to Xander’s version of events than Willow’s on the great cosmic teeter-totter of misinformation and half-truths.
“Oh… oh god. Oh… oh no.”
Concern chases hurt across Spike’s face, genuine despite the creepiness of the situation, and he takes a step in her direction. “Not coming over all queasy again are you, Slayer? Thought we were done with the holding-your-hair-back part of patrol last month.”
“The only thing making me queasy is you, Spike. Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s not so unusual. Two people in the workplace, feelings develop.”
“No. No, no feelings do not develop! No feelings!”
And they argue. They argue like breathing. Their eyes shine with emotions at least one of them isn’t supposed to feel (and who knows about Buffy? She’s protesting awfully hard.) Their voices rise and fall like a dance, like a fight, and sudden yearning grips me, for all those times I never heard the same cadence through the floor of my bedroom as a child.
“You are missing the point,” Spike says, pained. “This is real here. I lo-”
“Don’t! Don’t say it.”
She hardly ever let him say it, and I think she regretted that in the end. There’s a letter in my pocket, fifteen years old now and all I’ve got left aside from the voices in my head. She never expressed herself well, my mother, but I’ve managed to piece that much together. So I slide again, because now I need to hear it too, and then it’s later that evening and Drusilla has a cattle prod.
*
Buffy falls to the crypt floor in an ungainly heap, scraping against a sarcophagus on the way down, crying out in pain. I can’t help the gasp that leaves my mouth at the casual, violent pleasure on Drusilla’s face, the dangerous look on Spike’s, but I’m faded so it’s not like they can hear me. (Are you surprised, honey? It’s not like you’ve never dealt with vampires before.) Immediately, Buffy’s hand comes across her stomach and she looks up, grimacing, shock and desperate pleading in her eyes. The naked emotion brings Spike up short, but only draws Drusilla closer.
“No,” Buffy grunts as Drusilla bends at the waist wielding the cattle prod again, pale face grinning like a skull in the gloom. “Spike, please!”
And his expression is surprised - astonished - but resolute as, faster than my eyes can follow, he disarms Dru and turns the weapon back on her. She falls backwards, unconscious, as he drops forwards to Buffy’s side, dark and light splitting down the middle.
After the flurry of activity, the rooms stills to nothing but their breathing (why does he breathe?)
(Too stupid to realize he doesn’t have to would be my guess, Dawnie, he never was the sharpest tool in the shed.)
Spike takes Buffy in with his head cocked slightly to one side. She’s slumped inelegantly against the sarcophagus, coat splayed out wide, the soft jersey of her loose top now lying smoothly over the small, neat mound of her belly, and he reaches out as though to touch her, the motion aborted when she flinches back warily. I can almost see that demonic hearing tuning in, see the moment he suddenly hears the faint, rapid pitta-pat of the baby’s heart for the first time. Their eyes lock and for a moment Buffy looks as though she’s drinking in his expression of confusion and delight.
“So,” he says hoarsely after long, silent moments in which they just stare at each other and breathe. “Not soldier boy’s, I take it?”
“Emphatically not,” Buffy mutters, grimacing again. Her boyfriend left her. I remember that now. Because I wasn’t his; because I would need her. She frowns up at Spike. “Why are you…? Are you…?”
He’s smiling. Smiling like he can’t help himself.
I thought I was ready for this moment, but I never could have been.
“What? It’s good news, innit? Babies, puppies, kittens, rainbows, all that stuff that makes you goody-goodies happy.” Slowly, he reaches out again and this time he does touch her, this time she doesn’t shy away. “I can hear her little heart fluttering.” The baby kicks and his smile breaks out into a huge, silly grin.
Gone is the cold, dangerous killer of less than a minute ago. The transformation is mercurial, remarkable.
“How do you know it’s a her?” Buffy asks quietly, eyes never leaving his face as he gazes at his hand on her stomach in wonder.
(Blood calls to blood.)
“Always did have a soft spot for Summers women,” he replies, grin softening. The moment is broken when Buffy finally looks away, eyes falling to the cattle prod Spike still holds in his free hand. Following her gaze, horror dawns in his eyes. “Oh, Christ,” he croaks, rearing back on his knees. “She’s okay, I can hear she’s okay,” he says, stricken, looking to Buffy for some kind of acknowledgement, but before she can even haul herself up into a sitting position, he’s spun and staked Dru’s prone form, not even waiting to watch the dust settle before he’s once more at her side. “Buffy, love, I’m sorry, I never meant-”
“Oh save it, Spike,” Buffy sighs, impatient. “And help me up.”
“Look, can I get you something? Some water?” he asks as he offers her his hand, met with a glare that speaks volumes, though as she turns to leave, it’s clear that Buffy’s legs are more jello-like than leg-like. “You should see a doctor, pet. At least let me walk you home.”
Leaning heavily on the sarcophagus lid while trying to look like she isn’t, Buffy lets out a breath born of deep exasperation. “You just don’t ever stop, do you? I thought I made it clear earlier - this? Never going to happen. I would have thought-”
He’s watching her carefully. “Thought what?” She’s clammed up, but one thing I have already gleaned about these two; they can’t help but push and prick and needle at each other. “Thought what, Slayer?” He bullies her with his proximity until, with surprising resignation, she just gives in.
“Especially now…” she gestures down to her belly, one hand coming to rest beneath her bump in the universal symbol for ‘look how pregnant I am.’ She’s so tough, my mother. So strong. Everyone who’s ever known her has told me that, and I see it here, now. But I also see a small woman with large green eyes that are suddenly shining in the candlelight with a girlish vulnerability that makes me ache for her, makes me smile. Makes me love her as more than an idea.
“Oh, what,” Spike scoffs, “you think because Captain Cardboard got scared away, that’s enough to put me off too? Bloody hell, woman, I love you.”
There. There it is. The hinge my fate will turn on. My breath catches with his sincerity.
Buffy looks away, but Spike takes her chin in his hand (black chipped nail polish, just like on his severed hand.) “Hey, no, look at me. I love you.” Again, oh. “You’re all I bloody think about. Dream about. You’re in my gut, in my throat. I’m drowning in you, Summers, I’m drowning in you. No little bit can change that.” They just stare at each other for a moment, and I stare too, hypnotized. “You can’t tell me that there isn’t anything there between you and me, I know you feel something.”
Buffy’s face scrunches up as she bats his hand away from her, harder than is really necessary. “It’s called revulsion.”
He smirks. “No, love, that’s just the morning sickness.”
I remember his earlier jibe about holding her hair back. How she must resent him, taking the role from which her boyfriend fled.
“Whatever you think you’re feeling, it’s not love,” she spits, riled. “You can’t love without a soul.”
“Can.” He grits his teeth, abruptly at the end of his patience. “Do. Bloody women!” He throws his hands up as he paces away. “I just staked my sire, what more proof do you need? What the bleeding hell does it take, Slayer? You’ve already destroyed everything that’s me until all that’s left is you in a dead shell. It’s wrong, I know it. I’m not a complete idiot. Just can’t seem to help myself.” He returns, softening just as suddenly, gesturing at her bump, “So I’ll probably love her too. Just because it’s you.” Draws a shaky, helpless breath and mutters, a touch resentfully, “Probably already do.”
And that seems to hit a nerve or work something loose, because: “It’s a magic baby,” Buffy blurts. “Strong mystical… energy fetus. There were these monks, and… they said I have to protect it. I… I have to… and Glory…” Tears well up. “It feels so wrong.”
“You don’t know the bloody half of it,” Spike mutters.
“It doesn’t feel like mine.”
It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay because she’ll love me later. (Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt now.)
His eyes have dropped once more to her belly. “But you’re keeping her, though. Aren’t you, Slayer? Not gonna flush bite-sized there down the chute?”
“Spike, I’m five months,” she says tiredly. “I was already a month gone by the time they bothered to let me know, and it’s not like this was even supposed to happen. The time for that decision has come and gone.”
He looks relieved, and she looks as though she can’t begin to fathom his reaction.
“I hate magic,” she says, sagging. She looks so young. Spike takes a step closer and it almost seems like he’s going to embrace her - that she might allow him to - when she notices the red smear in the corner of his mouth.
“Is that human blood? Have you been feeding?” And all the earlier revulsion is back.
“No! I mean, Drusilla-”
“Ugh.” Buffy whomps him square in the nose, and he goes sprawling across the crypt. Her hair flies over her shoulder as she storms off. I follow her, jogging to keep up despite my extra inches. A couple minutes later, having cleaned himself up, Spike’s in the same predicament.
“Buffy!” he calls down the sidewalk. “Come on now, stop! You can’t just walk away from this.”
“What part of punching you in the face did you not understand?”
“So we had a fight, it’s not our first, love-”
She spins on him, furious. “Spike, you’ve fed. On a human. Maybe more than one and I will stake you where you stand if you don’t back off.” There’s nothing he can say, so he stops, hands up in a gesture of peace. “I want you out. I want you out of this town. I want you off this planet!”
“No, it’s not that easy. We have something, Buffy.”
“No, Spike, I have something, and in four months from now it’s going to be a baby.” (In fact I came a month early on top of everything else.) She stops, breathing hard, turns her back on him. “And I have to protect it from a hellgod, who wants to grind its bones to make her bread. I don’t have time for your games or your… your delusions.”
He’s standing just behind her left shoulder. His face…
Quietly, he says, “Then tell me what to do.”
She closes her eyes, unable to bring herself to ask. I don’t blame her, after the full spectrum from creepiness to adoration Spike has shown her tonight. Oh, but she can’t see his face.
“Protection? Help patrolling? Tell me what you need, pet.”
So softly it’s barely audible, she tells him, “I need to be able to trust you.” A slow, deep breath. “You get a bye this round, for staking Drusilla, I know she would have had to kill your little snack for you earlier.” She shudders, looking pale. “Lucky for you the current benefits of another strong fighter on my side outweigh the very great satisfaction I would otherwise take in pinning you out on top of your crypt and waiting for the sun to rise.”
“Oh, Slayer, careful,” he purrs. “Talk like that, you’ll get a man all worked up.”
“Not a man,” she mutters, starting off again, continuing on to home.
“Got me there,” he says, drawing level. “But I want to be, for you.”
She glances up at him, expression hard to read. “I’m tired,” is all she says as they round the corner onto Revello Drive. “Go home.”
“Right,” Spike says, coming up short at her dismissal. “So you’ll call when you need me?”
“You don’t have a phone,” she says, before closing the door in his face.
I wait outside with him this time, watching. His face is so open with emotion. I didn’t get that before, in the tent. (Don’t be ridiculous, Dawnie, of course you didn’t.) He’s happy, amused, more than a little angry, but despite their heated exchanges since Buffy’s revelation, I can still see the soft light in his eyes that first appeared when he realized what it meant. Realized I was there, and hers, and that he loved me just as helplessly.
It’s that thought that carries me back to the tent in the field with the gentle breeze and rustle of meadow grass.
When I get there, he’s awake.
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