CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Buffy is shaking her head, slowly as the walls around her seem to be not only closing in, but crashing down on her as well. She speaks in a low growl deep from within, "No."
Spike begins to approach her. "Darling---
"Don't even start with the comforting thing because it's not true. It can't be!" Buffy retorts, eyes flashing.
"Buffy, it is true," Giles says plainly.
"Then why didn't you ever say anything about it to me?" Buffy puts to her suddenly silent Watcher. "I was with Angel for three years and you never said a word about any prophecy of Aurelius."
His spectacles are not enough to shield Giles from Buffy's hurtful glare. The guilt fists itself inside of him, pounding his heart. "I know I should have told you long ago," Giles says. "I meant to tell you when things were becoming serious between you and Angel. Then Angel promised me he would tell you right before he lost his soul."
"What, before I stabbed him in the heart with a sword and sent him to hell, you expected him to say something like, 'Oh, this is sooo Prophecy of Aurelius.'"
"I should have told you myself. Even after you…even after Angel died. I should have informed you that his death had been foretold. When you and Spike became a couple, it didn't even occur to me that the prophecy might still be unfulfilled. But I forgot one component of the prophecy. The vampire who would sacrifice himself to save the world would do so willingly, for the sake of humanity."
"No," she pushes from her lips. "I can't…I won't believe it. Giles, you've brought your books with you. You need to…you need to research this. There's something that we're missing here, some fact that we've overlooked because this just can't be right." Giles stance remains fixed as he lets his eyes fall defeatedly to the floor. "Giles! Your books! Open one, at least one. One might tell you about what's going on and how we can stop it." Buffy bends to the coffee table and flips open the closest tome. "Here, you can start with this one. We can all take one. We can all read together, just like we always do. If we all read one of these, or just skim it for the details, we might find something. That's how we do things. There's a problem, we research it, we deal with it." Suddenly it feels as though she is the only one who can hear herself speaking. "Come on. What's everyone just standing around for? It's the end of the world again. It's not like we haven't seen that before. Please just take one book. Just one. One that might say something different. One that might tell me that…" Tears are beginning to burn at the back of her throat as she speaks. Daniel pushes his foot into her rib cage and she is reminded that she is carrying her child. His little face becomes a blur of pink and white as moisture glazes her eyes. "One that tells me I don't have to give up the father of my child."
Familiar arms encircle her and cold lips slide against her cheek. She turns in her lover's embrace, the child still silent and comforted by the re-acquaintance with his mother's surely hold on him. She finds a skiff of moisture over her lover's intense blue stare, but something else as well. There is purpose there, a steadfast knowledge that what has been put before him has to be done. His hands catch in her hair and he strokes her long locks, all the way to the ends. She can feel the coolness of his touch on her scalp as he begins each caress. She feels the warmth of his words as he begins to speak to her.
"I knew about the prophecy when I fell in love with you," Spike says softly. "That's one of the reasons why I was so terrified when I started to have feelings for you. One of the many reasons."
"Then why didn't you tell me?" she asks reproachfully.
"As Giles said, I thought that when Angel died, the prophecy was over and done with, love. But apparently there was a little more to it."
Being in his arms, she is more acutely aware of his strength and how much she had come to rely on it. She feels a sob building in her, so intense in its construction she weakens and falls towards her lover. "Oh God, Spike. Oh God. I can't live without you. I just couldn't!"
Spike motions for Dawn to take Daniel. Dawn cannot meet his eyes as she shifts the baby into her arms. Silently and without being asked, the group disperses, herding themselves into the next room.
Once the last retreating footfall is heard, Spike speaks again.
"Buffy, you've always wanted me to do the right thing. And this is right. You know it. So do I." He smiles, letting a droplet of his emotion spill down and sequester itself in the deep trench of his left cheekbone. "I promised you a long time ago that I would do anything to protect you and Dawn and Daniel. So if I have to die to keep the world from ending, then I have to."
For a moment she wishes that there were just a few traces of the old Spike still lingering, the Spike who would say, "Hell on earth might be interesting. And I'm certain that I've racked up enough points with Old Scratch to secure a cabinet position at least." But the world is different now for him. It's not just an endless forest where many creatures roam waiting to be poached, drained and killed. His world is the woman he holds in his arms and everything that touches her. She is his home and hearth, his reason for waking, for being, for getting through the day. She is a divine gift that was bestowed on him during one of God's moments of extreme benevolence. She is beyond precious to him; she is everything precious that was ever created. Whatever evil in him was worn away years ago, she is certain. Whatever good in her has been made better, just by knowing him.
What she remembers now is Spike's own promise to her, many months ago, when their affections for each other were new and whatever they were in the grand scheme of things wasn't nearly as relevant as the words, "I love you."
"You told me you'd never leave me," she says.
God, Spike thinks. In the dearth of a stake driven into his heart, she extrapolates a bit of his own sentiment and slays him just as well. He could never leave her. Even now, with her skin flowing under his touch like bolts of golden silk, it seems impossible that he could even leave the room, let alone leave behind this life they have created together. She invited him into her arms and he has spent so many heavenly months right there in the cloud soft embrace of her acceptance. Just going through the day has become an exercise in passion. The normalcy of their lives is made extraordinary by their polar opposite preternaturalness. It wasn't long ago that he called a crypt home and slept on a stone sarcophagus. With this woman he shares a bed in a small room, in a shoebox of an apartment that has a refrigerator, a TV, a shower with hot and cold running water, a microwave, and a tiny cradle.
He lifts her chin with the crook of his index finger, his dormant heart making a mockery of his dead flesh as he feels it splitting in two. "Darling, we have had exactly 468 days together and that's about 468 more days than I ever imagined we would have together. You've given me so much, Buffy. You've given me another chance at life. You've made me a man, the sort of man I could have never been if I had never known you. And you've made me a father. Yeah, you're right. I did tell you that I would never leave you. And I never will. Because of Daniel. As long as you have Daniel, I'll be with you, love. I think that's why he was born, love. Which makes him our miracle and not anyone else's. Here." He closes his hand over the watch around her neck. Springing it open, he reads his own words. I've got all the time for you, love. "You give this to Daniel one day, when he's ready. When he's curious about his old man. You sit down with him and tell him about me. You don't have to tell him everything, not all at once. But I do want him to know that his father loved him right up until the second he died."
"I'll tell him," she promises, pulling him closer to her
He takes her face in his hands and pulls her gently toward him. Kissing her fleetingly, he then places his forehead against hers. "I don't know what's going to happen to me," he says, "but I want you to know what wherever I am, in whatever dimension I find myself in, I'll never stop loving you."
Fresh tears puddle and then flow down her cheeks. No amount of telling herself not to cry will work and she is so glad he is not telling her to be brave. "I'll never, ever stop loving you," she whispers to him. She draws him closer, pressing her hands against his muscular form, needing to feel how solid he is, needing to know his substance. She clutches at the lapels of his duster, thinking that if she holds on hard enough, he won't disappear.
He feels in her arms a sudden dip in courage, as though she is claiming him forever in her embrace.
"Buffy, I have to go," he tells her.
"I know," she whispers into his ear. "I'm going with you."
He jerks her away from him, holding her at an arm's length. "Buffy---
"I'm going with you to the church," she says, tears sliding down her cheeks. "You should have someone you love beside you holding your hand before you…I'm going to be there to hold you hand."
He kisses her again, this time letting his lips linger on hers, hoping that wherever he is going, he can take with him at least the memory of her mouth.
"Darling, the first time I saw you, you were dancing. The next time I saw you, you were fighting. And I never want you to stop doing either, do you hear me?"
"Yes," she says, but just barely.
"Swear it."
"I swear."
Satisfied with her pledge, he wipes a few of her tears away with the dull blade swipe of his thumb and takes her by the hand. He puts her curled fist to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. "Till death do us part, love."
She nods, tightening her grip on his hand. "Till death do us part."
In the next room, Dawn is rocking Daniel very gently. He has drifted off to sleep and she could put him back into his carrier, but she doesn't want to. She wants to hold him and remember how close she came to never holding him again. She pauses to consider the little person in her arms. The protrusion of flesh on his upper lip catches her eye. A month of nursing has produced a callous. He is such a hungry baby. She is surprised that he wasn't yowling for Buffy's milk when he was first brought back. But he has been silent and accepting of all that has been raging out of control around him. If only she could be like him, Dawn thinks for a moment, reliant only on the impulses to feed and sleep. If only the chloroform could have knocked her out completely for the entire evening. To drag herself through this unending night has been an exercise in courage she didn't know she had and even she is mystified by the power she exhibited when she pummeled her boyfriend over and over. Those events seem distant now that the sweet and warm baby is nestled in her arms. He is safe from harm, but there is someone else who is not so lucky. Someone she loves will be going away from her. It won't be the first time. But it feels like the first time all over again.
Travis still remains in their midst, though if the glares he his receiving could be translated into weapons, he would be a charcoal smear on the Singleton's unblemished beige carpet. He has never stopped looking at Dawn, still hopeful that she might offer him something other than a punch to his jaw.
"Dawn, I'm---
"Shut up!" she orders as she continues to escort Daniel around the room in her arms. "Just shut up!"
Undaunted by her surly response, he tries again. "Dawn, I didn't mean to hurt you."
"Yeah? Well I did! And I could hurt you again if you don't keep your mouth shut."
With his swollen eye still stinging from her last jab, Travis decides that doing as he is told is a much better alternative than having the rest of his shit kicked out of him.
At this time, Spike and Buffy stride hand-in-in into the living room. Dawn looks over at the pair and automatically looks away after seeing the resolve in their faces and the traces of tears they have shed while reaching their final, unalterable conclusion.
"We're off," Spike says casually as though the two of them are departing home for the night.
"Oh," Giles says as he rises from his position on the sofa. "Do you need anything?" And a second after he says that, he is mentally proclaiming himself as the ass of all time.
"Got everything I need right here," Spike replies, holding tight to his lover's hand. All that's left are the good-byes, Spike adds to himself. He often wondered what it would be like to he finally said sayonara to Sunnydale. He thought that the jubilation would rival that of the worldwide welcoming of the new millennium. But judging by the sorrowful expressions on the faces of those gathered before him, the mark he has left on this place isn't one of the sort of treachery the Spike before him would have liked to be remembered for. Instead, the people here are pre-mourning the passing of a man they have come to know very lately as a brother and a friend. They line up sullenly like aged professors at a commencement ceremony.
Giles is the first recipient of Spike's farewell. Giles is stiff and composed as he shoves his hand forward begrudgingly and Spike takes it, giving it a firm pump. When the youthful vampire inclines his head towards his, Giles instinctively shrinks away and Spike has to laugh a little.
"Watcher," Spike says in a sharp whisper.
Giles thinks Spike is calling him by his title, but in a brief mental recap of the moment, Buffy's caretaker dissects the two syllables into Spike's true meaning. Watch her, is what the vampire has said to him. Giles nods and smiles, not even aware that his hand is still in Spike's until the vampire's fingers slip away from his. His eyes brim with emotion Spike never thought he would find behind those ever-present specs of a man who has been such a vocal adversary of his throughout the years.
Next is Willow, whose chin nearly rests on her chest as she lifts her eyes to him. A handshake will not do for this lovely red-headed coven maven and Spike wraps his arms around her. Her arms envelope his shoulders and he remembers a time when she gave him strained comfort with the words, "there, there."
"Fuzzy pink with lilac underneath," he intones in her ear.
"Huh?" she says.
As he pulls away he is smiling. "That sweater you once wore. Find it. Wear it." He takes her by the chin. "Life is much to short and you are too pretty to dress like a depressed member of the proletariat."
She didn't really expect fashion advice to be his parting words to her, but she didn't count on being hugged either. She will miss him and she feels she should tell him this, but the lump in her throat prevents her from saying anything. Her eyes shimmer with tears as she nods her farewell.
Tara stands beside her, and she receives not only an embrace, but a kiss on the cheek as well. Willow reasons that this is only right, since she is quite visibly the femme in their relationship. The witch has also always acknowledged the gentle bond between the two as outsiders of the group and has heard her lover speak of Spike with a familial tone in her voice. It was Tara who felt Spike's protective shield over Buffy long before he made his presence known when he returned to Sunnydale after his desert sojourn. She knew that something powerful would come out of his love for her and it has; something strong enough to save the world.
Xander rocks on his heels nervously as Spike comes to rest in front of him. No matter what hateful, heated exchanges the two men have shared over the years, the two have been friends, though neither have them has affixed that label to their relationship. To do so would imply that the ice had broken somewhere along the line and they both like to think of themselves as gliding along as mutual enemies who occasionally have a thing or two in common.
Their hands come up at the same time, forging not so much a handshake as a hug they can't go through with.
"Xander, Daniel's going to need a strong male influence in his life. Someone to look up to, someone to emulate," Spike says.
"And you want me to make sure Buffy finds such a person," Xander finishes for him.
Spike puts his fingertip to his nose. "Only at the last do we understand each other."
The two men stand a part for a short time, just one minute hand sweep on the clock until their arms to find their way around each other.
"I'll look after him," Xander says with a firm squeeze, realizing the slightness of Spike's shoulders and the magnitude of what has been placed on them.
"You'd better," Spike with a gentle warning in his voice.
Anya stands beside him, straddling the line between being exceedingly bored and exceptionally affected.
"I don't know why this is so hard," she says, folding her arms around her torso. "You have admittedly stolen from me and you always refer to me as 'Demon Girl.' But here, I'm going to use the vernacular of a family that has a popular and therefore profitable show on MTV." Anya smiles. "You're fucking forgiven."
"And I'm fucking thankful," this Prince of Darkness replies as he hugs her.
Now it is Dawn's turn.
She has been counting the people in front of her, knowing that her time would come eventually and hoping that it wouldn't. It's too late to sneak off and hide and play pretend that this is not happening. When her father left she spent many days behind her closed bedroom door pretending that he was still in the house. She told herself they were playing and extended game of hide and seek and she just couldn't find him. She counted all the numbers she knew, crying out "ready or not, here I come!" when she got to the place where she was making up sixty two-eth's or seven-fiveths. She knows all her numbers now. She can even divide them, make them into integers, combine them with letters and plug them into theorems. What she can't do still, after all these years, is say good-bye.
The teenager, so mature in her carriage and so tall in stature, shrinks away to the girl she was a year a half ago when she hears Spike call her "Sweetbit" and after that she can't stop the tears.
"Oh, baby girl…please don't cry," he tells her uselessly as he sifts her hair through his fingers.
"Oh, Spike…" is all she says. Her body is shaking and she knows she is losing her hold on the baby that has been entrusted to her. Luckily, Buffy shifts Daniel into her arms just before the bough breaks Dawn falls into Spike's arms.
Whatever tethered hold Spike was using to leash his own tears is tested when he feels the young girl tremble helplessly against him.
"You were the first human in 128 years to tell me that you loved me, remember that?" he asks her as he tugs her closer.
She does remember this. She told him she loved him in Giles' living room when her sister was lying close to death in the hospital. It was his love for Buffy that had brought about the fever that nearly killed her, and his love for her that struck her down with the ailment as well. But it was this affliction that told her his affections towards the both of them were true. She has loved this man for a long time, longer than her sister has, she knows. She once told him in anger that he wasn't her father or her brother, that he was just the guy who fucked her sister. She is cursing herself for every argument they've ever had, but especially for hurting him so when she knew in her heart he was more a father to her than her own father and more a brother than any imaginary brother could be. He has been to her, plain and simply, the best of everything to her.
"I'm so proud of you, Dawn. So proud of what you've become," he tells her. "One of my greatest pleasures has been watching you grow and become so beautiful and strong. I don't have to worry about you, Bit. You've proven tonight you can take care of yourself. But there's one thing you have to do for me. Your sister's going to need you and you have to be there for her. You have to."
"I will," Dawn manages to say.
He leans into her, his eyes becoming twin indigo beams drilling into hers. She feels his lips fall on hers with just the most polite pressure. With this kiss she feels very small indeed, small enough to disappear, small enough to die and not be remembered. His eyes resurrect the memory of herself as he backs away and she knows she has to be, just be. She has to be there for Buffy.
The baby is squalling, a feeding needed at last. Buffy opens her blouse and sits in a faraway corner. Spike sits by her, watching his girlfriend feed their baby. After Daniel is filled with the sustenance of his mother's milk and drifts towards sleep, Spike takes him into his arms.
"Hey, little warrior," Spike says. "Don't nod off just yet. Your Daddy needs to speak to you. You know that lovely girl there. That's your mummy. I'm leaving you with her." Daniel coos in a mock understanding of what's being said. It's as though sometime Daniel is being born all over again when he notices something different about him. "I love you, Daniel. Daddy will always love you."
Spike kisses his son before passing the infant back into Dawn's arms. His son will never know his love for him, but in the witness of the people around him, Spike hopes someday Daniel will know his father loved him, just by the very fact that he is alive.
At the doorway, clutching his love's hand, Spike surveys the group in front of him, all sad-soaked and blistered from his departure. He gives a final wave. And then he opens the door.