Chapter Eight: Oh death, where is thy sting, oh grave, thy victory?
(AN: Just in case you're wondering, the above lyric and the title for Ch. 3 are part of a slightly macabre WWI troop song which goes 'The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me. The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me. Oh death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling? Oh grave, thy victory? The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me.' Cheerful, eh? I guess that's what comes of living in several feet of mud for what you certainly know are going to be the last few months of your life)
"Hey there, Dawnster," Xander greeted her as she carried the baby's car seat down the drive. "Ready for school?"
"Like I'm ever ready."
"Well, do you have your lunch and your pencils, and some little bits of paper to soak in ink and flick at the other kids?"
Dawn smiled. "Always."
"Then you're ready."
She strapped William's seat in the back, clicked the handle back in place, and got into the front seat. "Okay. Take me to torture-ville."
"High school is not that bad, Dawnie."
"If this is going to be one of those 'Best years of your life' speeches, forget it. Principal Wood does those every day and it makes me want to punch him. I'm like, woah, you mean it gets worse? Hand me that axe over there."
Xander smiled. "I mean, you just have to remember all the stuff, like dating and stuff, that you can do."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Well, kinda not so much..." He caught her mischievous expression and rolled his eyes. "Okay, less of the teasing the man who's driving you."
"Okay. All right. I'm sorry, Jeeves."
Xander made a face. "Jeeves was a butler. Brains was a chauffeur."
"Why was he called Brains?"
"Because he was really dumb, Dawn, why do you think?"
She got out at the entrance of Sunnydale High and waved goodbye. "My friend Janice over there thinks you're hot."
"She does?" Xander preened a little.
"Sure. But then I told her you were married, and now she just thinks you're old."
"Thanks, Dawnie."
He set off again, this time aiming for a building with lots of playsets outside, swings and slides and carefully padded soft flooring. He pulled up, took William from the back seat, and carried him into the nursery.
"Okay, you know, kid, when they told you to gain weight at birth, I don't think they meant for you to carry on at the same rate," he said, hefting the carseat up into both arms. "What do you weigh, now, about four hundred pounds?"
The woman at reception smiled. "William never stops growing. And he's always hungry."
"Kid after my own heart. Okay. As far as I know, Buffy's coming to pick him up tonight but it might be late. She said she'll give you a call if it's gonna be after six."
"That's great. See you tomorrow, Xander."
Xander waved goodbye to his godson and drove off to work. He didn't mind taking Dawn and William to school at all - in fact, he quite liked it. He'd seen Anya gradually softening towards the idea of having children, since William had come into their lives six months ago, and to Xander it didn't seem like a bad plan at all. William wasn't so bad. Granted, he didn't have to get woken in the night by him, or worry about his future, or buy him new clothes every five minutes, but he still kinda liked the idea of having his own children.
It was Buffy he was worried about. Since she'd inherited the lease on the gallery, she'd been working twelve hour days there. She couldn't afford to employ any other staff than the one woman who came in for a few hours over lunch, and she knew next to nothing about art. The gallery was barely breaking even, but Buffy refused to give it up. Joyce had built it from scratch, and they all wanted to see it succeed. Xander just wasn't sure if Buffy was doing the right thing by keeping hold of it herself.
Buffy stretched out over her desk and held her eyelids open with her fingers. William was teething and often woke her up for what seemed like an urgent reason, but was just a request for attention because his gums hurt. Still, at least he didn't want feeding in the middle of the night any more. She'd had two whole weeks of uninterrupted sleep. For the first few months Buffy had been in a permanent state of exhaustion and Dawn and Xander had conspired to force her to stay at home and get some sleep while they looked after William.
Buffy had read somewhere that for each hour of sleep lost each night, an extra night was needed to make up. She figured she needed to sleep for about four years, solid, just to keep up.
She wasn't even aware she'd fallen asleep until the phone shrilled, jerking her awake.
"Summers Gallery," she yawned, "how can I help you?"
It was one of her regular artists who was due to have a showing next week. He was cancelling. He said his sister was sick, but Buffy could tell by his tone that nothing was wrong. He just didn't want so exhibit in a gallery that was doing so badly.
She replaced the phone and considered crying, but she was too exhausted.
The day was long and she didn't make any money. Eventually six o'clock came around, but there was still a stack of paperwork to be done. There was always paperwork to be done, and she never wanted to do it. She wandered around the high, well-lit space with its familiar - too familiar - collection of paintings and small sculptures, feeling her mother everywhere she went.
"God, Mom, why can't I make this work? I tried being a student, and that didn't work out. I tried being a viscountess and look at the mess I made of that. I'm not even sure what kind of job I'm doing of being a parent. You never said it was easy, but oh my God, does it have to be this hard?"
She didn't see the old DeSoto parked across the street, a pale blonde head turned in her direction. She just closed up the gallery, and by the time she left, the DeSoto was long gone.
Last time Spike had had a quarrel with Buffy it had been Harmony and Darla who made him get back together with her. This time they didn't hold back in telling him what an idiot he'd been.
"Hey, doesn't Glory get any blame in this?"
"Next time I see Glory, I'm going to drop-kick her lopsided ass," Darla said. "But you were damn stupid as well."
"Yeah, Spikey," Harmony said, "she needed you then and you should have stuck around."
"She needed me? Didn't I need her? She told me to leave."
"Her mother had just died," Darla rolled her eyes, "on top of which she was full of baby hormones."
"What baby?" Spike said bitterly.
"Precisely," Darla said.
"She was bound to be miserable," Harmony said. "You should have stayed and been nice to her."
"I am not sodding nice," Spike stormed.
"We'd noticed."
"I think you should apologise to her, Spikey."
Darla nodded.
"Oh, sod off," Spike snapped, and stomped out to his car. He sat there for a while, brooding, then he put the car in gear and squealed down the drive.
"Liquor store?" Darla suggested.
"Liquor store," Harmony agreed.
Spike got to the liquor store, sat outside for a while and looked at the special offers in the window. He'd got to know them all pretty well. For the last six months he'd been almost perpetually drunk. On the rare occasions when he'd been sober the hangover had been so bad he'd immediately started drinking again. He consumed his own bodyweight in cigarettes every day. The mankiest bars in LA came to recognise him as a regular. When the bars shut, he went to the liquor store.
Only in the last week his sisters had been at him to clean himself up.
"Stop drinking," Harmony said.
"Stop smoking," Darla opened a window.
"Stop ordering me around."
"You are going to kill yourself with all this," Harmony told him.
"So?"
At that Darla got pissed off and slapped him. "Stop being so bloody miserable," she said. "So your wife left you. Get a divorce."
"I don't want a sodding divorce."
"Why?" Harmony said with rare perception, "because then you might have to actually get on with your life?"
So for a week he'd been sober, and it was hideous. This was the first time he'd been allowed out without a chaperone, and where had he come? The liquor store.
In Sunnydale.
He had no idea what made him come all the way out here. But here he was, sitting outside a liquor store that just happened to be opposite a certain gallery, chainsmoking, watching through the artfully distressed windows as Buffy wandered around inside, tantalisingly hidden from him.
Right. Spike made up his mind. Tonight he'd get a hotel room in Sunnydale and clean himself up properly. Then he'd go and see her. He had no idea what he was going to say, but he figured some flowers wouldn't hurt.
Right. Plan.
He looked back at her, stretching up her arms, dropping her head back in a yawn, and set off. Operation Buffy was in motion.
As soon as Buffy put her head on the pillow the alarm rang, or that was what it felt like. She dragged herself out of bed and went into her mom's old room to wake William up. She fed him, bathed him and put a clean diaper on him. Then she got in the shower, pulled on some random clothes and fastened her hair up while she went downstairs to get breakfast ready.
Dawn was already up, eating Cheez Doodles for breakfast. Buffy rolled her eyes. Sometimes Dawn was like an extra parent: mature, responsible, bright, sympathetic. And sometimes, Buffy thought, watching her sister crunch a Doodle like Bugs Bunny, it was like having two kids.
"So tonight," Dawn said through a mouthful of food, "I'm going to Xander and Anya's to watch movies. Anya has some of that Greek herbal face pack stuff and she says I can use it."
"Cool," Buffy said. "Will you need a ride home?"
"Well, it depends on how drunk we all get. I'm joking, Buffy, they don't even drink while I'm there."
"Glad to hear it," Buffy said, thinking that right now a long cold drink would go down very nicely. "Okay, I'm supposed to be meeting with that girl who makes the rabbit sculptures-"
"The ones that scare Anya?"
"Yep. It might go on late. So can you..." She looked pleadingly at Dawn, while waving William's hand appealingly.
Dawn stamped her foot. "I was supposed to be having a kid's night," she said.
"And I'm supposed to be making money. Dawn, you know I'd have him if it wasn't for the client meeting. Please. She could make us a lot of money."
As it happened, the bunny girl, as Buffy helplessly thought of her, brought in a new load of sculptures that were even more frightening than the last. They'd never sell. William burst into tears if he ever saw one.
The bunny girl stayed late, arguing with Buffy about why her work wasn't selling, and threatening to go somewhere else, which Buffy thought might be the best idea to come out of their conversation. By the time she left it was dark, and Buffy still had paperwork to do.
She left the gallery, yawning and stumbling across the icy road to her car. It was midwinter, unusually cold, and some of the streets had patches of black ice on them.
Buffy didn't see the slick patch in the middle of the road until she'd already skidded on it, going down with a horrendous crack of her ankle, head smacking into the ice. The world went dark and she lay still.
Spike came out of the grocery store already lighting up a cigarette - California state law be damned - just in time to see the Mack truck rounding the corner at a slightly fearsome speed. In the same instant he saw the crumpled body in the middle of the road and thought for a dreadful second that Buffy had thrown herself there on purpose.
And then he skidded on the ice as he ran to her, and realised she'd fallen. He grabbed her and yanked her out of the road just as the truck went steaming past, honking its horn loudly at the stupid couple playing silly buggers in the middle of the road.
"Buffy," Spike shook her. "Buffy! Can you hear me?"
Her eyelids fluttered, her lips moved.
"Buffy, can you move at all?" He grabbed at her feet, her slightly worn boots, pulled one of them off and she yelped in pain.
"Guess that means your back's not broken," he said peering at her lower leg in the darkness, "although it looks like your ankle is. I'm gonna take you to the hospital, alright?"
But Buffy had already passed out.
Spike carried her to his car and fastened her in, opened the window to clear out some of the smoke-clogged air, and set off for the hospital, glad he was driving an automatic because it made talking on his phone easier.
He wasn't sure if he still had the right number - after all, they could have moved somewhere smaller. But Buffy's voice rang out of the answerphone, and Spike closed his eyes for a second as he listened to the message. Relentlessly perky. Damn her.
"Hey, niblet," he said. "Obviously you're not home. Listen - it's Spike, by the way - I just went to see your sister and she had an accident - nothing serious, love, she just slipped on the ice. But she's going to need X-rays, I'm taking her to the hospital. The, er, Sunnydale General. It could be a late one, bit, so I just thought I'd let you know where she is."
He paused, then added his mobile number. Then he chucked the phone in the doorwell and looked over at Buffy, who was unconscious still, head lolling, the streetlights flickering across her face. Dammit. He was hoping she might have got really horribly fat or ugly or broken out in disfiguring acne or got the pox or something while he'd been away. But no. She was still annoyingly beautiful, and he still really wanted her.
Damn her.
Dawn waved goodbye to Xander and let herself in. The house was dark and Buffy's car was gone - this really was a late night for her. She put the baby to bed, got into her pyjamas and took her shirt downstairs to soak away the pizza stain it had gained tonight.
The answer machine was flashing.
"Hey, niblet..."
Dawn dropped her shirt.
She listened to the message again, her heart thumping. X-rays? Accident? Oh God, Buffy! Dawn couldn't take losing anyone else.
Her hands shook as she picked up the phone and dialled the number Spike had left. Nothing. It didn't even connect. He'd kidnapped her!
Quickly, she got the phone book and dialled the hospital, babbling at the receptionist to know if a Buffy Summers had been admitted. She had. With a broken ankle and concussion.
"Will she be okay?"
"They're not serious injuries."
Dawn forced herself to breathe. "Can you - can you maybe put a call out for her to call me?"
Five minutes later the phone rang, but when Dawn snatched it up and cried, "Buffy?" there was a pause.
"No, niblet, it's me. Buffy's still unconscious."
It was so odd to hear his voice again.
"What happened?"
"I'm not sure - I didn't see it happen. Far as I can tell, she slipped on the ice outside the gallery, knocked herself out. She's going to be fine, love, really absolutely fine."
"You're sure?"
"Yes, love." His voice was warm, reassuring. Dawn had to remind herself that he'd broken Buffy's heart and never even tried to see William. "How've you been, niblet?"
"I-" in the distance, Dawn thought she heard William crying, and she moved out of the kitchen to listen better. Yep. Definitely crying. "I'm okay," she said coolly as she went up the stairs, "but is it me you should be asking about?"
"Well, I'm right here with Buffy and a team of medical experts," Spike said, and then he stopped. "What's that noise? Is that a baby? That's not funny, Dawn."
"No, it's not," Dawn agreed, realising William had a dirty diaper.
"Is it the TV? Switch it off."
"Why? You hate babies that much?"
"No, I - look, love, it's not exactly easy to have to listen to it when - is it getting louder?"
"Yes," Dawn said, "it's cold in here and he doesn't like that."
There was a pause.
"Who?" Spike said.
"William. Your son, Spike, or had you forgotten?"