Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox,
etc... except of course the ones I make up.
Summary: Spike and Buffy are going to have a baby together!!! I know, I know, it's been done about a million times but I promise that this one is different. Anyway, it also deals with all different types of families that could exist in the Buffyverse.
Spoilers: None really
Continuity: It's the sequel to "Apocalypse now... Again". However, you don't really need to read it to understand this fic. It picks up a few weeks after where "Apocalypse Now... Again" leaves off. Also, I just thought I'd point out that Tara is alive and with Willow, both witches are living with Buffy. Also, Xander and Anya are married and Anya is pregnant.
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FAMILY
Chapter 19: Not So Hard
Dawn took both hands, ran them over her face and then through her long brown hair. She stood for what felt like an eternity by the entrance to the house. She had been here so many times over the past so many years and it was never this hard to just push the damn doorbell.
"Don't cry," she insisted to herself, "you haven't even done anything yet."
She finished her process of psyching herself up for what was about to come. She wiped her hands without need on her pants for the fifty-billionth time. This time she would do it, she decided. This time she wouldn't hesitate and just press that stupid piece of plastic and he would come to her and everything would be okay... pfft.
Dawn lifted her finger to the doorbell but just as she did the door swung open a bit too eagerly. She jumped, startled by the unexpected movement.
"Ah!"
"Sorry!"
"Yeah well... wait, how did you know I was at the door?"
Dave smiled, but a smile that, Dawn noticed, didn't reach his eyes. "I was watching you from the window. You looked like you were gonna actually ring the doorbell that time so I figured... I just got impatient is all."
"Sorry."
"No! That's... it's really okay."
Dawn nodded and try tried to smile but failed. She could feel those familiar tears rising in her eyes because he was so close and yet, she was afraid to make a move. She could just reach out and grab him and she knew he wouldn't object but for some reason, she just felt that it wouldn't be right.
"Can I come in?"
Dave nodded, "of course."
He stepped away from the door so that she could pass over the threshold. To Dawn, it somehow felt different entering his home this time. She knew it was just because of the discomfort from their situation. But regardless of the why, she hated this feeling. She would do anything to make it stop. And she knew, she knew what she would have to do.
"So," she said with a heavy sigh, "what happens now?"
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"I'm sorry, Buffy, but I really don't know."
"What? What do you mean you 'really don't know'," she mocked her flustered watcher with a sad excuse for a British accent. "Giles, you ALWAYS know what to tell me! I mean. it's what you do!"
"No need to get fresh," he rebuked, as he sat on the living room coffee table so that he could face her at eye level. "I really just am at a loss. I feel like we've looked through every book."
"How can you say that, Giles? You of all people... I mean, there's always another book. Are you just giving up on me completely?"
"Now Buffy, that isn't fair."
"Is it because you disapprove? Do you not like the decisions I've made so you're sabotaging my life?"
"Easy there, pet," Spike said to her soothingly while shooting Giles an apologetic glance, "let's not say things we're going to regret."
"Oh so you're on HIS side now?"
"Buffy!" Giles said sternly but calmly, "I am on your side."
Buffy pouted in response. "Not the point," she muttered angrily as the tears of an irrational pregnant woman rose to her eyes.
"All right, then," Giles said softly and patronizingly, "what is your point?"
Buffy sighed heavily. "My point is that something has threatened the life of my child and it's scaring me. I'm having dreams of the Anointed One and it's terrifying me. I can't eat, I can't sleep, and I need your help."
"Well you needn't worry about the Anointed, took care of him good and proper."
Buffy gritted her teeth as she spoke to Spike, "Not. The. Point. Spike."
"Sorry."
"Could we please continue?"
Buffy ran her fingers through her long blonde tresses as she looked to Giles and nodded. He nodded back in response as he spoke to her again.
"Tell me again, what exactly did this vampire say to you?"
"'And it shall come to pass that the child shall not live, nor shall it die,' those were his words exactly."
"And it didn't have any identifying marks are ritualistic clothing."
"Nope," Buffy shook her head, "just your average-Joe stinky vampire. Except for the super strength and stuff. But I mean, he didn't even look like a master vampire or anything. Usually they have some class. Like the Master, Angel, even Spike has some dignity..."
"Hey!" Spike smiled as he gave Buffy a playful poke in the ribs.
"Not the time," Giles reminded the couple.
"Sorry," Buffy said softly, "we'll be good."
"All right, so, no markings, no symbols, not hints by what he said to where he may be from, he had no accent..."
"This isn't looking very good for us, is it?" Buffy asked in a pessimistic tone.
"It'll get better, as it always does," Giles said hopefully, "it's just. taking a bit longer than usual."
"Okay," Spike said as he took in what Giles was saying, "but what else can we try to learn from the attack. We know it was a vampire, yeah, but what about what he said? What does that mean? How can a child live and be not- alive at the same-"
Spike stopped short when he realized what he was saying. It wasn't like he hadn't seen that sort of thing happen before. As a matter of fact, he saw it all the time. Not only did he see it... he lived it. He was neither dead nor alive technically speaking. He was undead. He was a vampire.
"No," Buffy whispered in protest as she caught on to Spike's implication. "It's not even possible. She has a heartbeat! She's alive inside of me! I can feel her alive inside of me!"
Spike was at a complete loss for words. He looked to Giles for help but the watcher was just as speechless.
"I-I-I... now... let's not get all worked up. I'm sure that's not it. What he said... it could mean any number of things. But really, how much can you trust a vampire anyway?"
Buffy and Spike looked at each other for a long moment. He parted his lips to say something but no words could form or pass. Buffy clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out and she got up and ran from the living room. She ran up the stairs and Giles and Spike heard her bedroom door slam loudly.
"Well," the vampire quipped, "that went well."
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"I'm not really sure, Dawn. I mean, I'm not really sure why you're here. I pretty much figured you just wanted to stay away from me."
"That's not fair," she told him softly.
"Isn't it?"
"Of course it isn't," she said, her voice thick with hurt. "You have NO idea how hard this is for me. You have NO clue what I'm going through."
"Well I wouldn't now, would I?" He responded with passion to match hers, "how could I if you don't talk to me?"
"Why do you think I'm here."
"I don't know!" He answered, anger rising in his voice, taking over the hurt, "I expected the next time that I saw you it would be with a big box of my stuff marked 'Dave'."
"You're not funny."
"I'm not trying to be."
"You don't even care, just a little, do you?"
"How can you say that?"
"How can I not assume that! You're so flippant about the whole thing! How can I not think that you don't care?"
"You have no idea how much it's killing me to see you right now and still want you so badly."
"Fine," Dawn said coolly, "then I'll just go!"
"No!" Dave insisted, as he walked to her and took her arm gently just before she turned to leave. "Don't do that."
"What else is there?" Dawn asked. Her voice shook violently as she tried to abstain from crying. "I love you so much, I don't want you hurt."
"It's a little late for that, Dawn."
"Better now than..." she trailed off sadly.
"Than what?"
"Than when I'm gone. Or better now then when we've grown so close but I turn cold. The things I do, the things I see, death is my job. Misery is all I am so much of the time. I want to have you, I want to hold you, and I want you to be there to tell me the world isn't ending when really I know it is. But I can't do that, because I might turn to stone and I don't want you to see me like that."
"But I do!" He insisted, "I want to see you as whatever you will be. I would give anything for you. I know who you are. I know what you have to do. I know the decisions you have to make. But whatever you choose, I want to be there for it because I want to be there for you."
"Now," she muttered, "that's how you feel now."
"That's how I'll feel forever."
"You can't know that."
"Of course I can't, but I can try. Dawn I love you. You know I do."
"But that's not what it comes down to! Don't you see? My life is death, and misery, and sadness. I don't want that for you. I don't want you to be pulled to the dark the way I am. If I let this go now, you can fall in love again and have happiness instead of death and pain. That's what I would want for you."
"What about what I want for me."
"You're too blinded by your emotions."
"Well that's a very cynical thing to say."
"Cynical, yes; wrong, no. Part of what I do is learning how to let go of my emotions in order to see clearly. And I see it, now. This can never work. I don't want to pull you into a world where danger is at your doorstep. You deserve better than me."
"There isn't better for me, Dawnie, there's just you. All that I can see is you."
"But there will be a time when that is just a dream, David, I'll be gone before you know it."
"What is that supposed to mean."
"It means that what I do tends to have an early expiration date, and I don't want you to have to be around to see when my time is up. Slayers don't die in the prettiest of ways. Buffy's drowned and jumped from ten story towers, Kendra got her throat slit and I... only God knows how much longer I will be around."
"So is that what this is about?"
"What?"
"Dying?"
Dawn blushed and tried to control her emotions. "Partly."
"And the other part..."
"Is that I've never seen it work."
"Never seen what work?"
"A Slayer in a relationship. I mean, true, I've only really seen one Slayer try to make a relationship work, but it never does for her."
"For who... Buffy?"
"Yes."
"I don't really understand."
"You wouldn't, because you don't see her the way I do. Angel and Riley, those both ended SO badly. And now I'm watching her and Spike fall apart."
"Fall apart?" Dave asked, completely confused.
"She says they're not, but..."
"Dawn?"
"Look... bottom line, I didn't come here for what just happened. I didn't come here to fight with you or try to explain my reasons for why I tried to get you out of my life."
"Then why did you come?"
"I came to tell you that I can't. I can't get you out of my life. I've already let you in in a way I've never let anyone else in before. I try not to think of you but all I can think of is you. You're what I dream, what I breathe. I really don't think I've even taken the time to breathe since I tried to let you go. The truth is, I just can't. I love you too much to. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I can seem to live with that, because I know, I know, that you love me just as much too. And I believe you when you say you'd be willing to go through all the shit with me. I can it in the way you hold when we're together, and I could feel just now when you grabbed my arm. And I love the feeling of your arms around me and until the day I die whether it be tomorrow or a hundred years from now I know that I will never stop wanting the feeling of having you. So I came to say I'm sorry, and that I don't want you out of my life anymore. I could barely live when you weren't with me for a matter of days, how am I supposed to live without you forever?"
Dave, at a complete loss for words, just grabbed Dawn into his arms and embraced her as tightly as he could. Dawn grasped him desperately and all the tears came. Relief, sadness, anger, frustration, happiness, love, tension, and complete contentment flowed from her body in the form or salt water.
Dave placed a gentle kiss on Dawn's cheek and he wiped tears from under her eyes. "See," he joke and he smiled a smile that lit up his eyes, "that wasn't so hard."
TBC...
Summary: Spike and Buffy are going to have a baby together!!! I know, I know, it's been done about a million times but I promise that this one is different. Anyway, it also deals with all different types of families that could exist in the Buffyverse.
Spoilers: None really
Continuity: It's the sequel to "Apocalypse now... Again". However, you don't really need to read it to understand this fic. It picks up a few weeks after where "Apocalypse Now... Again" leaves off. Also, I just thought I'd point out that Tara is alive and with Willow, both witches are living with Buffy. Also, Xander and Anya are married and Anya is pregnant.
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FAMILY
Chapter 19: Not So Hard
Dawn took both hands, ran them over her face and then through her long brown hair. She stood for what felt like an eternity by the entrance to the house. She had been here so many times over the past so many years and it was never this hard to just push the damn doorbell.
"Don't cry," she insisted to herself, "you haven't even done anything yet."
She finished her process of psyching herself up for what was about to come. She wiped her hands without need on her pants for the fifty-billionth time. This time she would do it, she decided. This time she wouldn't hesitate and just press that stupid piece of plastic and he would come to her and everything would be okay... pfft.
Dawn lifted her finger to the doorbell but just as she did the door swung open a bit too eagerly. She jumped, startled by the unexpected movement.
"Ah!"
"Sorry!"
"Yeah well... wait, how did you know I was at the door?"
Dave smiled, but a smile that, Dawn noticed, didn't reach his eyes. "I was watching you from the window. You looked like you were gonna actually ring the doorbell that time so I figured... I just got impatient is all."
"Sorry."
"No! That's... it's really okay."
Dawn nodded and try tried to smile but failed. She could feel those familiar tears rising in her eyes because he was so close and yet, she was afraid to make a move. She could just reach out and grab him and she knew he wouldn't object but for some reason, she just felt that it wouldn't be right.
"Can I come in?"
Dave nodded, "of course."
He stepped away from the door so that she could pass over the threshold. To Dawn, it somehow felt different entering his home this time. She knew it was just because of the discomfort from their situation. But regardless of the why, she hated this feeling. She would do anything to make it stop. And she knew, she knew what she would have to do.
"So," she said with a heavy sigh, "what happens now?"
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"I'm sorry, Buffy, but I really don't know."
"What? What do you mean you 'really don't know'," she mocked her flustered watcher with a sad excuse for a British accent. "Giles, you ALWAYS know what to tell me! I mean. it's what you do!"
"No need to get fresh," he rebuked, as he sat on the living room coffee table so that he could face her at eye level. "I really just am at a loss. I feel like we've looked through every book."
"How can you say that, Giles? You of all people... I mean, there's always another book. Are you just giving up on me completely?"
"Now Buffy, that isn't fair."
"Is it because you disapprove? Do you not like the decisions I've made so you're sabotaging my life?"
"Easy there, pet," Spike said to her soothingly while shooting Giles an apologetic glance, "let's not say things we're going to regret."
"Oh so you're on HIS side now?"
"Buffy!" Giles said sternly but calmly, "I am on your side."
Buffy pouted in response. "Not the point," she muttered angrily as the tears of an irrational pregnant woman rose to her eyes.
"All right, then," Giles said softly and patronizingly, "what is your point?"
Buffy sighed heavily. "My point is that something has threatened the life of my child and it's scaring me. I'm having dreams of the Anointed One and it's terrifying me. I can't eat, I can't sleep, and I need your help."
"Well you needn't worry about the Anointed, took care of him good and proper."
Buffy gritted her teeth as she spoke to Spike, "Not. The. Point. Spike."
"Sorry."
"Could we please continue?"
Buffy ran her fingers through her long blonde tresses as she looked to Giles and nodded. He nodded back in response as he spoke to her again.
"Tell me again, what exactly did this vampire say to you?"
"'And it shall come to pass that the child shall not live, nor shall it die,' those were his words exactly."
"And it didn't have any identifying marks are ritualistic clothing."
"Nope," Buffy shook her head, "just your average-Joe stinky vampire. Except for the super strength and stuff. But I mean, he didn't even look like a master vampire or anything. Usually they have some class. Like the Master, Angel, even Spike has some dignity..."
"Hey!" Spike smiled as he gave Buffy a playful poke in the ribs.
"Not the time," Giles reminded the couple.
"Sorry," Buffy said softly, "we'll be good."
"All right, so, no markings, no symbols, not hints by what he said to where he may be from, he had no accent..."
"This isn't looking very good for us, is it?" Buffy asked in a pessimistic tone.
"It'll get better, as it always does," Giles said hopefully, "it's just. taking a bit longer than usual."
"Okay," Spike said as he took in what Giles was saying, "but what else can we try to learn from the attack. We know it was a vampire, yeah, but what about what he said? What does that mean? How can a child live and be not- alive at the same-"
Spike stopped short when he realized what he was saying. It wasn't like he hadn't seen that sort of thing happen before. As a matter of fact, he saw it all the time. Not only did he see it... he lived it. He was neither dead nor alive technically speaking. He was undead. He was a vampire.
"No," Buffy whispered in protest as she caught on to Spike's implication. "It's not even possible. She has a heartbeat! She's alive inside of me! I can feel her alive inside of me!"
Spike was at a complete loss for words. He looked to Giles for help but the watcher was just as speechless.
"I-I-I... now... let's not get all worked up. I'm sure that's not it. What he said... it could mean any number of things. But really, how much can you trust a vampire anyway?"
Buffy and Spike looked at each other for a long moment. He parted his lips to say something but no words could form or pass. Buffy clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out and she got up and ran from the living room. She ran up the stairs and Giles and Spike heard her bedroom door slam loudly.
"Well," the vampire quipped, "that went well."
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"I'm not really sure, Dawn. I mean, I'm not really sure why you're here. I pretty much figured you just wanted to stay away from me."
"That's not fair," she told him softly.
"Isn't it?"
"Of course it isn't," she said, her voice thick with hurt. "You have NO idea how hard this is for me. You have NO clue what I'm going through."
"Well I wouldn't now, would I?" He responded with passion to match hers, "how could I if you don't talk to me?"
"Why do you think I'm here."
"I don't know!" He answered, anger rising in his voice, taking over the hurt, "I expected the next time that I saw you it would be with a big box of my stuff marked 'Dave'."
"You're not funny."
"I'm not trying to be."
"You don't even care, just a little, do you?"
"How can you say that?"
"How can I not assume that! You're so flippant about the whole thing! How can I not think that you don't care?"
"You have no idea how much it's killing me to see you right now and still want you so badly."
"Fine," Dawn said coolly, "then I'll just go!"
"No!" Dave insisted, as he walked to her and took her arm gently just before she turned to leave. "Don't do that."
"What else is there?" Dawn asked. Her voice shook violently as she tried to abstain from crying. "I love you so much, I don't want you hurt."
"It's a little late for that, Dawn."
"Better now than..." she trailed off sadly.
"Than what?"
"Than when I'm gone. Or better now then when we've grown so close but I turn cold. The things I do, the things I see, death is my job. Misery is all I am so much of the time. I want to have you, I want to hold you, and I want you to be there to tell me the world isn't ending when really I know it is. But I can't do that, because I might turn to stone and I don't want you to see me like that."
"But I do!" He insisted, "I want to see you as whatever you will be. I would give anything for you. I know who you are. I know what you have to do. I know the decisions you have to make. But whatever you choose, I want to be there for it because I want to be there for you."
"Now," she muttered, "that's how you feel now."
"That's how I'll feel forever."
"You can't know that."
"Of course I can't, but I can try. Dawn I love you. You know I do."
"But that's not what it comes down to! Don't you see? My life is death, and misery, and sadness. I don't want that for you. I don't want you to be pulled to the dark the way I am. If I let this go now, you can fall in love again and have happiness instead of death and pain. That's what I would want for you."
"What about what I want for me."
"You're too blinded by your emotions."
"Well that's a very cynical thing to say."
"Cynical, yes; wrong, no. Part of what I do is learning how to let go of my emotions in order to see clearly. And I see it, now. This can never work. I don't want to pull you into a world where danger is at your doorstep. You deserve better than me."
"There isn't better for me, Dawnie, there's just you. All that I can see is you."
"But there will be a time when that is just a dream, David, I'll be gone before you know it."
"What is that supposed to mean."
"It means that what I do tends to have an early expiration date, and I don't want you to have to be around to see when my time is up. Slayers don't die in the prettiest of ways. Buffy's drowned and jumped from ten story towers, Kendra got her throat slit and I... only God knows how much longer I will be around."
"So is that what this is about?"
"What?"
"Dying?"
Dawn blushed and tried to control her emotions. "Partly."
"And the other part..."
"Is that I've never seen it work."
"Never seen what work?"
"A Slayer in a relationship. I mean, true, I've only really seen one Slayer try to make a relationship work, but it never does for her."
"For who... Buffy?"
"Yes."
"I don't really understand."
"You wouldn't, because you don't see her the way I do. Angel and Riley, those both ended SO badly. And now I'm watching her and Spike fall apart."
"Fall apart?" Dave asked, completely confused.
"She says they're not, but..."
"Dawn?"
"Look... bottom line, I didn't come here for what just happened. I didn't come here to fight with you or try to explain my reasons for why I tried to get you out of my life."
"Then why did you come?"
"I came to tell you that I can't. I can't get you out of my life. I've already let you in in a way I've never let anyone else in before. I try not to think of you but all I can think of is you. You're what I dream, what I breathe. I really don't think I've even taken the time to breathe since I tried to let you go. The truth is, I just can't. I love you too much to. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I can seem to live with that, because I know, I know, that you love me just as much too. And I believe you when you say you'd be willing to go through all the shit with me. I can it in the way you hold when we're together, and I could feel just now when you grabbed my arm. And I love the feeling of your arms around me and until the day I die whether it be tomorrow or a hundred years from now I know that I will never stop wanting the feeling of having you. So I came to say I'm sorry, and that I don't want you out of my life anymore. I could barely live when you weren't with me for a matter of days, how am I supposed to live without you forever?"
Dave, at a complete loss for words, just grabbed Dawn into his arms and embraced her as tightly as he could. Dawn grasped him desperately and all the tears came. Relief, sadness, anger, frustration, happiness, love, tension, and complete contentment flowed from her body in the form or salt water.
Dave placed a gentle kiss on Dawn's cheek and he wiped tears from under her eyes. "See," he joke and he smiled a smile that lit up his eyes, "that wasn't so hard."
TBC...