CrossingShadowRiver 20
Buffy is lying in her own bed on fresh sheets, showered squeaky-clean, milk, cookies and fruit within reach on her night stand. More importantly, on the other side of the bed her very own Spike sleeps, half dressed and sprawled untidily on his back. In between them is their baby, her little miracle. He's dressed in hastily bought baby clothes of the wrong color and tightly swaddled up in a pistachio green shawl. His red shrimp fingers are holding on determinedly to Spike's pinky. Sensible of him, to pick out the good reliable parent straightaway. She guesses he must have sensed his mother would be no good to him and latched on to the one person who'll always love and cherish him.
The mother in question feels empty inside, hollow, like a dry husk left by some animal after all the good stuff's been scooped out. She's been eaten up from the inside and from the outside, by a monster and by her baby, and there seems to be nothing left. She just lies there, dry eyed and hiding the little shriveled-up heart inside. They don't know yet how it is with her, but they'll leave soon and she can just slink off and disappear from the prying eyes of the world. She can't bear to know what they've seen. She hurts each time her sister's pitying eyes touch her and bleeds at Spike's every glance.
She remembers, but can't really feel the moment of triumph when she'd first felt Phoenix's lukewarm sausage body under her hands. The relief after the pain and the hard work was like having killed a difficult demon, when for a moment she was able to forget that she's sore and tired. Usually, there's, like, sex and pizza after a good kill. But now there was Tara, who in a way she hasn't quite grasped yet, isn't the real Tara, and Dawn lurking, and Spike spazzing, and of course her son. She held him in her arms, and that was great, but she doesn't really know what was supposed to come next. She should have finished the baby books, too, instead of concentrating on the birth. Yeah.
Anyway, she won't need to know what to do with a baby. Spike will leave and of course he'll take the baby. It's totally clear to her that he already feels possessive of it, that he loved it immediately in a way she can't.
She should really try and get some sleep. There's no use in dreaming of sneaking down the stairs, hopping on the nearest tube and letting it carry her off to a distant lonely spot. No one would know her there, or her terrible history, and she could die alone and unloved, like she's lived. Tears slither down her thickly creamed face and she orders them to stop. This is so typical of her. The only person she can cry for is herself, and it's no wonder people leave her if she's like that. She closes her eyes and tells herself to sleep, which has always worked before.
Buffy opens her eyes. Has she slept? The light in the room has changed, no longer gray. The late morning sunlight glows through her pumpkin yellow curtains and bathes the room in a warm gentle light. She must have slept for hours. No, the clock says it's been ten minutes. Why can't she just get some oblivion? She really needs it. She tries to sit up straighter but her stomach muscles are still on strike. She's sore and sleepy, but annoyingly alert at the same time.
A tiny mewl makes her heart race and her breasts ache. The baby scrunches up his little red face and stretches his arms and legs with little grunts and sighs. It looks so grown up. His sea-anemone fist waves on aimlessly and he settles down again. He is kind of cute, actually. A sweet scent rises from him. She's just going to sniff him once, so she can remember how he smells when he's gone.
Buffy bends over the tiny bundle. Gently she pries the shawl away from his neck and buries her nose in the fragile folds. He smells like warm milk and Soft Wipes. He's gorgeous. Her breasts hang down heavily, almost painfully, and the nipples are thick and protruding through her thin nightgown. She kisses the warm downy brow and immediately feels guilty. She should let him sleep in peace. Can't be fun to be squeezed through a narrow bloody hole into a harsh bright world. Poor little motherless thing.
Buffy straightens up with an embarrassingly piggy little grunt and looks into blue eyes. Her heart leaps and inexplicably, a tear drips down her nose. She thought she was dry hollow woman, but now it's as if she's as full as Lake Mead, she could just go on crying and milk is going to spout from her boobs any minute now. Spike reaches out with his free hand and cups her wet cheek.
"Hey," he whispers.
Buffy doesn't know what to say. It's kind of cruel of himto prolong her agony like this. Can't he just end it briefly and coldly, without endless waffling and goodbyes? She wipes off some snot and tears and tries to stop the pathetic sobbing.
"Go on then, Buff, let it out," Spike says. "You deserve a good cry."
Exactly. She deserves pain, with seconds, and side orders of misery, because she's caused so much of it.
Spike manages to come closer to her without disturbing the baby or losing contact with the little hand clasping his finger. He cradles her head to his chest and kisses her hair. "That was a clumsy way to put it. Just meant you've been through so much, of course you'd need to let it out."
"Just go already, Spike," Buffy sobs. "I can't bear it if you're so nice to me. Just take the baby and leave, I know you want to. I'll be fine."
Spike is silent. She quickly sneaks a peek at his face, to confirm how forbidding and angry she thinks it will look, but his expression is so neutral, kind even, that she's thrown. Why would he look at her like that? Has she imagined all this? Did she have some kind of psycho pregnant episode? Her hand steals to her neck, but the crust of healing scar is definitely there. Her hands are still thin, so that would be another clue it wasn't a nightmare.
"So," she starts. "Why aren't you mad at me? Did it really happen?"
The baby murmurs and Spike tucks him in tighter before he answers her. "It really happened. Don't beat yourself up about it, love. You're not the villain in the story. I won't say you didn't make some bloody awful decisions, but of course you didn't wanna be held in thrall by the other Spike. Nobody would. I'm just glad you and the baby are alive and well. Curious, though, as to why he ended up here. Didn't quite get what Willow said, that she'd brought him here and he'd been human and all. Tons of spells involved anyway."
He gently strokes her hair and she leans into his hand for a short moment, not quite allowing herself to believe that she might be forgiven. She can't bask in his love yet, she has to tell him everything, because she is responsible for this, no doubt about it. He doesn't understand the full scope of what she did. He'll be so angry if he knows.
"There's more, Spike. That wasn't the Spike we met ten years ago. This was the Spike I went to for..." She gestures to the baby. "…to get pregnant."
Spike moves away from her fractionally, but Buffy notices. Her heart sinks. Of course. She doesn't deserve love and forgiveness, she knew it.
"I don't get it, Buffy. It was that Spike? He was human and then Willow got him turned again? That's even worse than I thought. It's not exactly penetrating the old noggin yet, love."
Buffy swallows. "He was a human being when I met him. I mean, of course he was, or he couldn't have…you know."
"Fucked you and knocked you up."
Buffy tries to look into Spike's eyes, but he keeps them fixed on the opposite wall, on the empty spot where the painting was going to go.
"Yeah."
Her cheeks burn at the thought of her sneaky escape from blasted other-dimensiony LA. She bows her head, but then decides she has to face up to Spike, condemnation or not.
"I…I'm not proud of that now, but I left him without saying goodbye. He must have realized I was pregnant. He wanted his child, of course he would, and set out to find me."
Spike plucks at a fluffy bit of cotton on the cover. "What. Did you even tell him what you were there for?"
"Of course I did. What do you take me for?"
"Dunno. Someone who screwed someone like me."
"He knew, Spike. He accepted it. He knew I wouldn't stay."
"Maybe he did, Buffy, but if I think what I would feel in circumstances like that. I'd be…I'd die rather than let you go."
"He wasn't you, Spike." She tries to catch his eye. "He chose to stay in LA with Angel, and fought the apocalypse, and got the Shanshu instead of Angel. Angel, or being a hero, was more important to him than I was. He wasn't you."
Buffy really needs to convince Spike. He's taking on the hurt an injustice done to that other Spike, and that's just not something she can deal with.
"I came pretty close to choosing that fate myself, Buffy. Doesn't make him that much different. If the other Spike hadn't dumped me on your doorstep…"
"You'd never have looked me up?"
"Dunno. Probably not."
Her eyeballs burn, scorching their sockets. "What are you saying? You regret choosing me?"
"You think there's a Spike, even now, who's storming out of the house? Or beating you up? Or fucking you silly?" he asks.
"I guess those are some of the things you're thinking of doing?"
"Yeah, that's right, Buffy, that's right."
He turns his face to the window and Buffy is left with the back of his neck to look at. He needs a haircut. She'd like to rest her hand on his sweet boyish neck and kiss it. She can't do it if he doesn't look at her first.
"There's more going on here, Spike," she says desperately. Anything to change the subject. "Did Willow say she helped him cross the portals? Because it must have been someone who's the Gatekeepers good buddy."
To her surprise, Spike nods. "Sure. 'Course it was Willow. I knew that, who else would have set up the disinvite on the flat?"
"You must have thought I did that," Buffy says, her throat thick and slow.
"Just for a moment," Spike says, but he's still and distant, only six inches away from her.
"Do we have to do something about Willow? Will Tara be okay?"
He looks at her for a second, blue eyes blazing. "Dunno. I think she will be, for now. But yeah, we have to do something permanent about Willow. Phoenix could have been killed. D'you know what she did to Tara?"
"No. She was wonderful, though. I feel kind of guilty I've been seeing her so little lately."
"Didn't you notice any changes?"
Buffy shrugs. "Little overweight, bad hair day. That kind of thing?"
Spike shakes his head. "It's not even the same woman, Buffy. Willow has been shipping in new Taras from other dimensions for years."
He's going too fast for her. Taras plural? Yeah, sure, if there's a plural for Spikes, why not one for Tara, but why?
Spike opens his mouth to explain but seems to give up on it. "Ask Dawn to explain, I'd get it all muddled. Point is, Willow really needs to be stopped. Maybe we should ask Giles and Andrew what they think."
Spike's lower lip juts out in thought, and he's still fiddling with that fluffy bit with his free hand.
"So…what happens now?" she asks.
Spike looks away from her; the hazy brilliance from the window falls on his right cheekbone like a spotlight.
"We go on. Don't we always? Put it behind us and get on with the future," he says, but his voice is vague and unconvincing.
Buffy's heart lurches dizzily in her chest. She'd believe him more readily if he was holding her or something, or at least looking at her. He's so far away. She stretches out her hand and touches his forearm. He flinches, but then he turns toward her apologetically.
"Sorry," he says. "Still taking in what you said. About it being zombie vamp's baby. I knew it wasn't mine, but you killed the father of your child." He turns his face to her. His brow is furrowed and his eyes look unhappy. "I don't want to think about it anymore, Buff. Just makes me…queasy."
"I'm sorry," she says.
How often can you say that in a relationship and still be believed? Has she used up her quota? She gets unsteadily to her knees and reaches over Phoenix to embrace Spike. It's awkward, just their heads and shoulders touching, with a great gap and a baby between their lower bodies.
Buffy lifts her head after the brief stiff hug and kisses Spike's lips. He sighs under her mouth and she wishes she could feed him the love she feels for him right now. It's so much, how can she convince him it's enough?
"Spike?"
"Yeah."
"I love you."
"Yeah."
His hand slowly glides up the wide sleeve of her nightgown and skims her breast. Her nipple stiffens and a rush of arousal travels to her womb, where it sets up strange vibrations. Everything down there must still be pretty jumbled up, she guesses. She'd like to ask Spike to have a look at it and report, but she can't bring herself to do it right now. He doesn't look at her, but down at her nightgown-covered body, and his fingers travel slowly over her slack belly, down to her crotch. Buffy holds her breath.
"Buffy…"
"Yeah?"
The eagerness in her voice is pathetic, but now's so not the moment to have any pride.
His lips seek her mouth and she opens up to his kiss. It makes her overflow with tears again, must be the hormones; she's ready for some happiness. He jerks away from her abruptly and when she opens her eyes to look on his face again, she stills at the look on his.
His face is taut with anger, she feels his hands boring into her upper arms.
"Spike, what?"
He forces out words between clenched teeth. "I wanted to get past this Buffy, but I can't do it. I can't do it anymore. You've scored some big ones before, but what you said…him being the real father…and I always knew you'd kill me someday. It makes me so fucking mad, I wish I could just…"
He gets up violently. The baby cries. She hadn't noticed it before. Spike stands there, every muscle in his body tensed, trying to get out more words. Buffy hopes for more explanation of what he's feeling, what he needs, but he gives up and bolts. She hears the door slam. The baby cries on.
TBC