Title: Ether (The Peacemaker Prophesy, pt 19)

Author: Nimue

Rating: PG-13

Feedback: Yes, please

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, Fox... Just Borrowing.

Summary: Spike moves on. Buffy tries to anchor him to this existence. An unlikely hero tries to rescue them, but will it be in time?

Ether

The room was unnaturally silent. Buffy's tears streamed down her face, but her breathing had all but stopped, almost as if she was caught in time. Waiting. Willow and Tara were like statues standing in the doorway. What was there left to say? Suddenly Spike looked neither big nor bad. Neither Vampire nor Man. Something else. Something deeper, wilder than all of them and more infinite than time.

"Is... is he?" Tara stuttered.

"I.. I don't know," Buffy answered, her eyes wide as if she were unsure of what to do next. Where to go. Willow slowly walked to Buffy and Spike, lowering next to them and laying a hand on Buffy's folded knee. The simple gesture shattered the Slayer. Buffy felt as if she had been molded of ice and then smashed with a sledgehammer until the splinters of her existence were carried off in the breeze. As if she were no longer there and her essence was above them, tangled in his, dancing in the ether that was neither here nor there.

Buffy barely noticed Willow pulling Spike's shirt up, exposing the re opened gash, peeling the sodden bandages from his skin, mopping him with her own sweater. She never heard her frantically ordering Tara to run and find a way to get the doctor there, sunlight or no. Telling Buffy that he was still there. That he had not moved on yet.

But Buffy already knew. She was with him, his fingers light as air entwined in hers. Their bodies moving slowly to unheard music in an unseen place.

The last dance.

Even in the vast expanse of nowhere she tethered him. Bound him to her. He looked at her teary, frightened eyes, and she could see him saying goodbye. Still she pulled him tighter against her and willed the music to go on.

"Buffy, you know I have to go," he whispered, brushing the hair from her

face, pushing loose strands behind her ear.

"You have to stay. I can't do this without you."

Spike smiled at her softly, his palm resting on her cheek. "You could

always do this. Before me. After me. With me. I didn't stay because I had to, Pet."

"But I need you," she whispered, trying to focus on his eyes. His endless eyes.

"I'll be nearby. One day, Love. We'll find peace together." He leaned

down and kissed her lips so softly that it felt as if the air itself had

kissed her. The tears streamed down her face and he wiped them away one by one with his thumb.

"At least stay until the dance is over," Buffy asked, burying her head in his shoulder. Spike wrapped one arm around her waist, stroking her hair with the other.

"Alright, Pet. Anything for you."

*****

The front door kicked open and Willow jumped from her spot hovering over the failing Vampire. Angel burst through covered in a blanket. Despite herself, she almost chuckled, remembering the countless times Spike had forced his way in a smoldering bundle. Spike. Willow lowered her head again, back to pressing on the wound, trying to make the blood stop. Buffy never moved. Never flinched. Just sat with his head in her lap, her hands on his cheeks, with big, heavy tears dropping from her open eyes.

"Willow?" Angel asked, tossing the blanket on the stairs and stepping into the dining room. "Willow, is he... dead?"

"Not quite," Willow answered, looking up at Spike's grandsire, her own eyes dewy and exhausted. "It won't be long now," she continued, sadly.

"What's wrong with Buffy?"

Willow glanced over at the Slayer. " I think she is saying her good-byes."

Angel looked at her strangely. "Saying?"

"They're both still here. She'll come back when he moves on. I think, at least," Willow stuttered. Angel stared at the pair for a moment and felt something move deep inside of him. He, Angel, was meant for the Slayer. That's what he had been told. But in that one moment, he understood that they had been horribly wrong. He could never love her as completely as Spike had loved her. Buffy would never love him as she loved Spike. It was *that* love. That brutal, beautiful, angry, passionate, trusting, grown up love that would save them all.

"Where's Emma?" Angel asked. There was no choice anymore. Spike could not die. Not that Angel had not thought about it thousands of times over the century plus since Spike's creation. But Buffy, Emma, all of them needed him.

"Hunh?" Willow asked, a little shocked by the question.

"Emma?"

"Angel, Emma shouldn't... she shouldn't see this. She's only a baby."

"She's older than us all, Willow. Just tell me where she is."

"You aren't going to... hurt her, are you?" Willow asked, a little

frightened. Angel looked at her in utter shock.

"No! Angel... not Angelus. I have... I had... a child of my own."

Willow looked at him, compassion crossing her face. "Anya has her. They're in the basement."

*****

Buffy could feel Spike slow until they were no longer dancing. Until they were only wrapped in each other's warmth. There was no more music. Just the silent haze and soft light. She clung to him as Emma had clung to her. Desperate. Full of want and need and fear. Afraid to let go or he might just disappear.

"Love," he whispered into her hair. "I'm dying."

"I know," she answered softly.

"Running out of time, Pet. Otherwise you could fill your dance card with only my name."

"Isn't there any way we could stay here? Rest?" Buffy asked, still tangled in him.

"They need you. Emma needs you."

"You're her champion," Buffy said, looking up at him like a child.

"That's the tough thing, Pet. Champions always fall."

"But there are still battles left," she pleaded.

"Nothing you can't handle, Love."

Buffy was silent, thinking, hoping she was wrong. "Do you want to go?" she finally asked.

Spike pushed her away enough to see her face, his arms still locked firmly around her tiny body. "No." he answered, falling one last time into the emerald pools in which he had been drowning since he first laid eyes on her in that school. "If it were up to me, Pet, we'd never be apart."

"So stay," she begged, knowing it was not his choice to make.

He smiled sadly at her. "I love you, Buffy."

"I know. I love you too." Spike fell silent, his face slacking. "Is

this... is it time?" she asked, still clinging to him like a life raft on a raging sea.

"Think so, Pet."

*****

Angel pounded up the staircase, carrying the restless baby cradled against his chest. Anya had protested, citing every excuse Buffy might have made, but, in the end, didn't fight as Angel loosed the girl from her arms.

Somehow, it rang true to Anya. What Angel had said. The words were like a rhyme stuck in her head. The tune she could not remember, but the words she knew were true. Emma could save those who saved her. She watched Angel dart up the stairs, steadying Xander's protests with a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"This is bigger than us," Anya whispered to Xander. "It's hard to remember sometimes in a dimension as narrow as this, but there *are* things bigger than us."

Xander was silent, stroking Dawn's hair. The teen shifted, tired eyes

fluttering open. "I want to go upstairs," Dawn whispered.

Xander looked down at her. "Dawn, I don't think Buffy would want that."

"*I* want that," the girl said, sitting up on her own.

"I'm not sure you'll like what you see," Anya told the girl.

"But...what Angel said..." Dawn stuttered.

"Dawn," Xander sighed, "we don't know if he knows anything at all."

"And it will only work if Spike's still alive," Anya added,

matter-of-factly. Xander shot her the lack of compassion warning glare.

"Well, it's true," Anya defended.

Dawn was silent. Spike. He'd managed to be everything to her at one point or another. Her first real crush. Then her friend. Her confidant. Her brother and her father, and always her protector. "Then I need to say goodbye," she whispered, teary eyed. "I have that right, don't I?" Those big innocent eyes melted into water.

Xander stared at her softly. "Yeah, Dawn. I guess you do."

*****

"Angel," Willow gasped, her eyes soft and watery, her hands pressed hard

against Spike's wound. "What are you doing? She shouldn't be here."

"Willow, if Emma's really the Peacemaker, she can help Spike," Angel said, kneeling down opposite her.

"Help? How? Have you gone all loony? She's a little baby."

"Because the Peacemaker is... well, it's like Dawn being the Key. Dawn's a kid, but she's been in the universe for ages. You ask her to explain how dimensions open or how she can do it and she can't tell you, because it is not a memory. It's what she is. Emma is the same way. She's a little baby, but she's older than time. She doesn't know she can do it. She just can."

Willow looked at Angel skeptically, her wrists sore, her hands white and

bloodied from holding on to Spike. Trying to keep him alive. "Angel, how do you know this?"

"Look at it like this, then. Do you actually think that he's going to make it until the doctor gets here?"

Willow looked down on Spike's blanched and sunken face. Felt the warmth

slipping through her fingers. "No," she answered meekly, her own tears

sliding down. Not so long ago, she would have never even imagined shedding a tear over Spike. But he had saved her that night in the schoolyard. Then he had done for her what no one else would do. He forgave her.

"Your debt to me is cleared." She heard his voice in her mind.

Spike had been... truer ... to them all. But especially to her.

"So, will it hurt to try?" Angel asked, still holding Emma against him,

stroking her back, fighting his own longing and hurt from remembering

holding Connor.

"No," Willow answered, moving her hands. They heard the basement door open and footsteps patter into the dining room. Dawn walked over to their huddled forms. Numb. Like her sister, the tears streamed softly down her pale cheeks, but she said nothing. Slowly, Dawn sank to her knees at Spike's hip, pulling his hand into her lap, tracing his fingers with her own. Trying to anchor him in this realm as Buffy was tethering him in ether.

*****

Spike felt his body jerk and he tugged against Buffy, even as he tried to move away. Like his feet were being sewn with silken thread to the fog that surrounded him. He opened and closed his hands behind Buffy, feeling the pull, the sudden change in density.

"What is it?" Buffy asked, her head falling back so that she could see his face. She was afraid to move her arms from around him. Like a child afraid of letting go of the string of a balloon. Afraid he might float away.

"Don't know, Pet," Spike whispered, pressing his chin to her forehead.

"Feels like something grabbed hold."

"Then don't let go," Buffy muttered, still clinging to his waist.

*****

Angel gently loosed the tot from her death grip on his shirt, turning her towards Spike and sitting her on his bent knee. The wound was raw and wide, like a chasm in a granite sea. Nothing a baby should ever see. Nothing anyone should, for that matter. Xander cringed as Angel eased the child forward, holding her with one arm around her middle, the other guiding the girl towards the horror that was killing her father. Willow cringed, but Dawn was silent, watching. Waiting. Buffy was still, threading between the worlds, weaving a silken rope between she and her love. Praying that it would bind them in one world or the next, or even the spaces in between.

Two chubby palms pressed against pale skin, igniting the pooling blood into a silvery stream. Spike's body shuddered, then seized, shaking

unconsciously as the baby crawled closer. Angel's arm stayed protectively around the baby's middle as she crawled. The silvery blood glowed with an iridescent shimmer, then drifted slowly away like dust in the wind. The baby stopped, stretching herself on her father's stomach as she had so many times before, and her forehead rested with a thud just below the wound.

Willow gasped. Dawn froze, clinging to Spike's hand as much for her own

comfort as his. Xander and Anya watched with fear and wonder. Angel still clung to the baby although she seemed herself to become ether in his grip.

Emma began to shimmer like moonstone glimmering in the sun, her form becoming liquid, her beauty becoming ethereal, immortal. She seemed to

change as seamlessly as rain to steam on heated pavement, her small body

melting into mist until all that was left in front of the frightened

onlookers was a glimmering tiny tracing. A beautiful silvery shadow, curled against his skin.

The blood became mercury and the mercury, a silvery film in the air. The ragged edges of the torn flesh began to close slowly, as if being knit together stitch by painstaking stitch with silken spider web. No one moved. No one dared to speak. What was in front of them was more than they could fathom. Her moonstone body and mercury movement melting, reshaping, shimmering into the air. The scent of vanilla filled the room, intoxicating them all. Comforting them. Giving them peace.

*****

A sound like the click of heels on marble startled Spike. He craned his

head, turning away from Buffy, his fingers still entwined in his love's.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yes," Buffy asked, her brow furrowed.

A chair appeared in the fog in front of them. Then the scent of vanilla

filled the air. Spike sniffed, filling his nose with the sweet smell.

"She's here."

"Who is?" Buffy asked, clinging to Spike's hand, but exploring the space with her eyes in childlike wonder.

"I am," a smooth, rich voice with just a hint of an accent said softly into the ether. The young woman sat down gently in the chair. No older than eighteen, but with timeless beauty and wordless wisdom.

"Emma?" Spike asked, his voice quiet.

The girl smiled serenely back. "Mum," she said nodding at Buffy. "Daddy."



To be contd.