I didn't lie, I really didn't think I would have time to post today, but I found a few minutes so I guess I'll go ahead. It's only one chapter, though.
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Part 9: The Innocent
She laid in the hospital bed, already exhausted from all this, and it hadn't even really begun. Upon her arrival, they had given her something to help with the pain that was more intense then anything she had ever felt before in her life. Her mom and Aunt Julie were not lying when they said that childbirth is the absolute worse pain you can ever go through. Buffy learned her lesson. Next time, listen to your mother. She knows what she's talking about.
The drugged up, blonde slayer hadn't seen Spike since administration nurse cornered him and forced him to fill out a pile of papers. She knew he couldn't possibly know half the stuff they were going to ask him about her, but, hopefully, he'd know enough to get by with.
When they finally figured out that she didn't speak a word of the Slavic language, they sent in a doctor that spoke broken English. Buffy had always been taught that English was the international language. So why was it hardly anybody in this freaking hospital spoke it?!
"Mrs. Summers?" the doctor said with a thick accent. "I, ah, look."
"What?" she asked not understanding.
The doctor brought his hands together, and pointed out two fingers, then spread them apart.
"Oh, okay," she said nodding her head and he went to work.
When he came back up, he looked at her with a smile and said, "You fast girl." Then he started to yell at the door, to the nurse who nodded and disappeared into the hallway. Buffy had no idea what was going on, as the nurse reappeared with several others who brought a gurney with them.
"Wait, what's going on?"
It took a moment for the doctor to understand what she had asked, and he told her, "Delivery."
"What? Now?!"
He nodded his head as the men slid her over onto the moveable bed, though she was protesting the whole way. As they pushed her out into the hall, she began to search frantically for the ex-bleach blond who was suppose to be there at that minute, if, nothing else, translating for her what the doctor was saying.
"Come on, fang face," she said lowly as they pushed her into a different corridor. "Where are you?"
******
He grumbled as he gave the annoying nurse her valuable papers and headed in the direction she said they had taken Buffy. The slayer was going to kill him if he was late for this. After all, she needed someone there who she could beat with her slayer strength and not actually kill. He was qualified for that, considering that he was already dead.
Spike turned down a hall and come to a complete stop when he saw two men, dressed in black over coats and matching suits, speaking to one of the nurses. A young woman was standing away from them, keeping an eye out, and spotted him.
"There!" she said pointing before she came charging at him.
Damn. He thought they would have a little time before those nitwits figured out that they were hiding out in Prague. Why did they have to find them now? They couldn't wait one more bloody day.
He turn and hurried back down the way he came and ducked into the stair well he had spotted earlier. He had to lead them away from Buffy. The last thing she needed to deal with at that moment was these crazy goons going after her when she was in the middle of labor. They followed close behind, taking the same two steps at a time that he was as he charged upward. He finally came to the last level and charged out onto the snow covered roof. At least there, he stood a chance of being able to beat them from all the room, plus no nosey doctors and nurse snooping about to see what was going on.
He ducked on the other side of shed, the snow hitting him hard in the face as the icy wind slapped those who ventured out. There was a problem with these guys. Unlike the others, they were humans, he could tell by their sent and the way the blood was rushing through their veins. Human, one hundred percent.
Okay, so what's your brilliant plan, mate? Let them watch as you have a massive migraine attack if you try to fight back?
He just had to keep them away from Buffy, that was all that mattered.
The two men flanked out from behind the young woman, he could hear one taking the right of the roof as the other took the left. The girl traveled strait forward. If he could get past them back into the stairwell, maybe he could lock them out here. After all, he didn't think he would have a headache if they froze to death.
"Vampire!" she called into the night. "Show yourself. We mean you no harm."
Spike climbed up on top of the tool shed. Maybe he could get the drop on her.
"Yeah, you just want to have tea and discus the finer points of Chaucer with me, right?" he said sarcastically as he made it up.
He bent over the side and watched as she hurried toward the sound of his voice. She crept along the font of shed, looking for him on the other side.
"You must trust us," she told him as she jumped to try and surprise him on the other side, only to find it empty.
At that moment, he leapt from high above, and grabbed her from behind. "Forgive me, if I don't believe you," he said as he held her close to him as a sort of shield.
The other two came charging at them, but he positioned himself where she was in front, and they couldn't get to him without going through her. It usually wasn't his style to use a human shield, but he was desperate at the moment.
"You do not understand," she told him. "You and the Slayer are in grave danger here."
"Yeah, from you people," he growled into her ear. "A problem I plan to rectify."
As he back towards the door, he felt a sharp pain race through his body as something hit him hard from behind. He stumbled, letting the girl loose, who ran a few feet away from him, as he fell to the ground. Through his blurred vision from the blow, he looked up and saw a well dressed man standing over him. He had a club in his hands, and was preparing for another blow.
Oh, no. He failed her, he thought as the club came up.
The girl he had attacked flew from the side, and tackled club man to the ground. He looked over and watched as she punched the man hard in the face, then brought his head up and broke his neck. Spike could hear the other two fighting some others, but this was getting to weird. When she was satisfied with her work, she walked back over to the vampire lying in the snow, and held out her hand.
"Trust me. We are not here to hurt you. We want to help you."
He considered his options at that moment. He could either, a) chose to trust these people who probably just saved his undead ass, or b) keep trying to run with the slayer and the kid until they did get caught and drug back to wherever it was that Lang had them in the first place. Though he knew that it was dangerous, he decided to go with a) for this one. He reached out and took her hand, and let her help him up.
"Good," she said with a smile. "We must hurry. There is very little time left."
******
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut as she did as the doctor ordered her to. She was pushing, but it hurt so much, she wasn't sure if she could do this or not. Sweat and tears poured down her face, as she tried to hold back a scream, but failed miserably.
To fast, this was all happening to fast. She hadn't been in labor long enough to be at the pushing state. Ekaterina had said that it took nearly twenty seven hours before her first one was born. She hadn't even been in the hospital for two hours! How could she already be at the pushing stage?
She groaned loudly as she fell back, unable to go any more. The nurse was saying something to her, but she couldn't understand, though she knew it had to be soothing because the tone she was using. She felt as if she were about to start hyperventilating as the soothing nurse dabbed at her forehead with a wet rag, trying to cool her off. There was blizzard outside, and she was trying to cool her off. Oh ironic is that?
The doctor looked up at her, and said from behind his mask, "Again, Mrs. Summers. Push, hard."
She nodded her head, grabbed onto the mattress, and began to push. She could feel it coming.
As she kept her face squished up with eyes squeezed shut, she said through her clutched teeth, "Damn it, Spike! I really hate you!!!"
******
He slid to a stop in front of the room that they had told him Buffy would be in, but found that it held only one pregnant woman and her husband, while the other bed that had been occupied a short time ago laid empty. His new 'friends' searched around for her, but they weren't having any better luck then he was. A young nurse came out of the room across from the one she was suppose to be in, and he pulled her aside.
"Miss," he said frantically before calming himself. "Miss. Where is the young woman who was in that room? A Mrs. Summers?"
She smiled at him. "Oh, she's in delivery, Sir. Right down the hall."
"Thanks," he said charging away in search of her with the other three in toe.
As he reached the end of the hall, a door opened and they pushed her out of the room. Her stomach was no longer large and swollen, and she looked utterly exhausted from the ordeal she had just been through. She looked at him with tired eyes before drifting away.
"Buffy," he said as he tried to reach her, but a doctor stopped him. "Hey, that's my wife!" Here anyway, he silently added.
"Sir, please," he said holding him back as they took her down the hall. "She tired. Let her rest."
"Is she okay? And the baby?"
The young doctor smiled at him, like so many people seem to be doing now a days. "They're fine. It was ruff and fast, but they're okay. You have a pretty little girl."
A girl? He had a daughter?
"Give her a little time to rest, but we'll bring the child to her room as soon as it's cleaned up," he told him before he could even process what he had just said about him having a daughter.
"All right," he said as the doctor walked away.
The girl he had just met frowned at that information.
"We do not have that much time. Those men on the roof are only the first. Now that they know you are here, there will be more."
Spike nodded his head in agreement. She was right. In no time, they would swarm this hospital like a pride of lions on a wounded gazelle.
"Can you and your boys give us half an hour? Let 'er rest for a minute at least."
The woman agreed with a nod, then said over her shoulder to the men, "David, James, contain the area. I'll go with Mr. William here."
The two large men disappeared without another word, and the young woman followed him down the hall to Buffy's room.
She was a small woman, maybe a little taller then Buffy herself, with long black hair that flowed around her waist, and olive color skin. By the looks of her, Spike would guess she was of Italian decent, maybe Spanish.
"So, what do we call you? Ma'am?" he said as they reached her room.
"I am Catherine. You may call me as such."
"Spike," he said as he reached for the door handle. "No more Mr. William stuff, all right."
"Very well," she said sweetly. "Spike."
The two entered the dim room and found the slayer lying, still asleep, on the bed that was raised up. She looked so peaceful there, he hated that they were going to have to wake her, but Catherine was right. It would only be a matter of time before Lang's minions would show up.
He bent over close, which caused her to awake from the sleep she had been enjoying.
"Spike?" she said in a sleepy tone before she winced in pain.
"Hey, love," he said lowly.
"Where were you?" she asked weakly. She then noticed the black hair girl standing off to the side watching them, and he saw her whole body go tense. "And who's she?"
"Don't worry, Slayer," he told her, trying to get her to relax. "She's here to help us. Listen, we don't have a lot of time. See-"
A gently tapping came at the door before a nurse walked in, carrying a tiny child in her arms.
"Mrs. Summers?" she said as she bounced the child slightly. "There's someone here to meet you."
Spike step away from the bed as the nurse bent over and handed the child to Buffy, who face became as soft as he had ever seen it. He could just stare at them in amazement as she held the child, and slipped into a maternal side he didn't even know she had. The nurse looked at him for a moment, before heading back out the door she had come in. He sat down on the edge of the bed, continuing to watch them, as the tiny baby yawned widely, and then opened her eyes, those bright, beautiful, blue eyes.
"I am sorry," Catherine said, bringing them back to where ever their minds had disappeared to. "But time is of the essence. We must go at once."
"Go?" Buffy said, looking at him for an explanation. "Go where?"
"That's what I was tryin' to tell you," he said. "We ran into some of Lang's boys here in the hospital. We took care of 'em, but there are probably more on the way. So we need to make ourselves scares quick like."
"But," her voice dropped and he leaned in close to speak to her. "Do you trust her?" she whispered.
"I don't think we have a choice here, love," he said shaking his head. "I doubt you can walk, so you'll just have to settle for me carrin' you for now. Catherine, could you take..."
He stopped when he suddenly realized he had no idea what his daughters name was.
"Can't very well call her Junior, now can we," he said, reminding the Slayer that she hadn't told him the name she was thinking of calling her.
"I was thinking Dylan," she said in a 'wanting approval' tone. "After the poet."
He smiled at her. Since when did she like poetry? "Dylan's fine. I like Dylan."
She smiled at that news.
Catherine came and took Dylan from her mothers grasp, much to Buffy's disappointment, but she would have her back soon enough. No one was going to take his little girl away from them, he'd swear to that. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he lifted her from the bed and carried her out into the hall. He followed Catherine down to the parking garage, where David and James were waiting for them in a running car. Then the group disappeared into the snowy night.
******
The poet in question is Dylan Thomas who wrote "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", one of my all time favorite poems. And yes, I realize Dylan is a boys name, but I like it.