CrossingShadowRiver 10 by dutchbuffy2305

Rating: R

Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into UnchippedTerritory.

Author's note: Special wave to monanotlisa and gamilla, for Wesley. As ever, thanks to my dear betas, meko00, ayinhara, LadyAnne & mommanerd.

Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305

Feedback: Yes, please, to

The vampire rolls off her and starts to snore. Buffy thinks of him as the vampire, so she'll never confuse him in her mind with her own Spike. His limbs twitch like a dog dreaming of chasing cats and his eyeballs circle endlessly behind their translucent lids. Finally, he relaxes even more and Buffy feels the heavy hand of his will on her slacken. She inches off the bed and waddles silently and swiftly to the bathroom. Buffy the duck.

The highest priority taken care of, she hurries to the kitchen and downs glass after glass of water. Her hands look strange and claw-like, the flesh sunken between raised tendons and veins. She eats the last apple, a soft and wrinkly one she'd have passed up on any other moment, and drinks soup straight from the can, cold. Time is a major concern; he might be ready for her in as little as five minutes. She stares at the phone for a second but moves to the bathroom again. She's already left phone messages with everyone she can think of. Spike's cell rang uselessly in the bedroom the first time she tried, waking the vampire and earning her a second round of abuse that day.

Buffy hasn't pieced his story together completely, but then she thinks he doesn't remember all of it himself. She knows that he set off from his pathetic shack to find her, which is an incredibly stupid idea, but of course, it's something someone who was once Spike would do. She'd kind of expect no less from her own Spike. Then he was vamped, check. Whether his weird zombie condition was caused by the kind of vamps, the dwindling magic in his world or something else, she doesn't know. Buffy also doesn't know if the vampire himself gets how out of it he is, or that he's definitely getting worse. His mind seems a blank on how he traveled to this world, to London, but she has some ideas on that one.

She undresses, planning to shower and wash her hair, but this weak logy feeling tingles through her limbs. She turns languidly, moving as if under water and glides back to the bedroom. It hurts her back and pelvis to walk like that, but it's how the vampire thinks she should move, floating on tiptoe like the Sugar Fairy. His mind must be like a sugar cone, mostly empty, and the rest sickeningly sweet stuff that sticks to your teeth and leaves you as hungry as before.

Halfway to the bedroom she's allowed to slump again. He didn't really wake after all. She picks up her silk robe, greasy and limp like her hair, but it's pretty warm and easily slipped on. She opens the front door a tiny crack. Someone human might want to get in, Dawn or Giles, Andrew maybe. They all know she and Spike are in London and they all said they'd visit. She wishes they would hurry up already.

Buffy puts her lips very close to the barrier, which she can't touch without waking the vampire, and whispers into the empty corridor.

"I invite you in, Spike. You are always welcome in my house. I love you."

It won't work. She knows this because it's not the first time she's tried, and Spike still couldn't get in. The invite must be face to face, she guesses. She wanted to fade into the carpet when she opened the door for him a few hours ago and saw the hopeful look on his face, the roses in his hands, his hair still wet from a shower. What does he think of her now? His staying away for so long made her fear the worst, that he'd left her and wasn't coming back, like guys do with her. Her heart flipped from happiness and fear when he showed up, but she could never have imagined what the vampire did next. Spike will never forgive her for that, even if he realizes later that she was made to do it. Knowing you had sex with another man is not the same as actually seeing it happen. Oh Spike.

Buffy walks up and down her living room, wary of trying for the shower again. Exercise is more important than being clean, anyway. She should be grateful his hold on her has been so light the last days. In the beginning, he kept her so completely under his thumb that days passed without her being aware of it. She finally got through to him that she needed food and sleep if she and the baby were to survive. If she wasn't the slayer she would be dead already, she's sure of that. She doesn't dwell on the baby's condition too long. It still kicks, which is a good sign, isn't it? Crying and getting even more scared than she is now won't get her anywhere. She has to think harder. Is there anything she's left undone? Telephone, tapping SOS on the heating pipes, writing help on a fogged window. Maybe she should have watched more thrillers.

Will Spike try to rescue her? She really needs rescuing. Time is getting short. The vampire thinks he loves her obsessively, but vampire love is a twisted and stunted thing, feeding on hate and resentment. Once she's had the baby he might kill her, in fact he probably will, whether he means to or not. And he's fixating on the baby more and more. And she asks herself, what do vampires do to babies? Nothing good comes to mind.

She's tired and sits down next to her stack of birthing books. She picks up 'The New Contented Little Baby Book'. She's left off reading it so far from a superstitious fear of jinxing the birth. She might as well, because how much worse could it get? She puts it down again. Things can always get worse, even if you can't imagine how. 'New Pregnancy and Childbirth' then? She settles down with 'Birthing from Within'.

She wakes up with pages 2 and 3 over her face. Time to return. The book falls down and she steps on it, unable to prevent this through the urgency of the vampire's wishing. His will pulls her forth with an iron chain around her neck, choking her if she resists. He's still asleep when she enters the bedroom, but she knows from experience it's easier to reassure him with her scent and touch, even in his sleep. She gets more precious moments of peace like this than if she stays away a few extra seconds and makes him anxious.

She lies down next to him. He's curled up in a tight ball, facing away from her. He almost looks like Spike from that angle, the good angle. Only a little tear in his ear, a mottled lump on the jaw and a quarter inch of grey-brown hair showing. She strokes the curls softly. He sighs and stretches out a little, turning towards her warmth like a flower to the sun, a very sad and withered one. Once, not so long ago, he was a good man. A man so good, so heroic, he was given the reward of returned humanity. And now he's become a monster again on her behalf, a pathetic broken monster who can't even fight and kill, who has to reach and strain to find emotions and images in his brain, and who more and more often comes up with the wrong ones. He's getting worse by the day, and even her Slayer blood doesn't restore him to full capacity any more. The saddest thing is that he knows this on some level. Poor guy. She can actually pity him a little bit, when he's asleep like this. Any other time his behavior doesn't leave too much room for pity.

She tries to shift to a more comfortable position and retrieves the offending lump from under her spine. It's the book the vampire's been reading, 'The Birth Partner: Everything You Need to Know to Help a Woman through Childbirth'. Tears prick in her eyes. That's just great.

TBC