Crossing Shadow River prologue, by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into UnchippedTerritory. 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, meko00, ayinhara & mommanerd. Thanks to the ladies from Tea at the Ford and Herself for some great pointers.
Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305yahoo.co.uk
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 a burnt odor 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 so 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 atrophied 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 it mean, how did she come here and why?
"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, although 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 to 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 understand 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 shamefully is 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 didn'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.
TBC