CrossingShadowRiver 22, by dutchbuffy2305

Rating: R

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

Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, ayinhara & mommanerd.

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

Feedback: Yes, please, to

Buffy wakes up. Again. It feels like she's had only an hour or two of sleep and when she checks her alarm she sees it's true. She never realized having a baby was so much work, she'd sort of thought having it was the pinnacle of difficulty and afterwards there'd be pretty clothes and walks with strollers. Instead there's very little sleep and sore breasts. Not that feeding a baby isn't wonderful, because it is, but it happens a little more often than she'd like. If only she got more sleep, she'd have more energy to enjoy it.

She reaches for the stack of diapers next to the bed. They've made the bedroom a fortress of food and diapers and baby clothes so they don't have to get up in the middle of the night more than is strictly necessary. Spike's sleeping for once, and she lets him. She can change a diaper. She's seen him do it often enough by now. Phoenix' small whimpers still when she starts pulling down his soft little pants, as if he anticipates and likes what she's going to do. His dark blue eyes look up to Buffy as if he knows she's his mother. Maybe he does. She wipes him clean, kisses his tiny little belly, tickles the crease of his scrawny little hips. He's so small, although she'd swear he's almost doubled in size the past days. And no wonder, her breasts are like watermelons, he must get a lot of nourishment out of them.

She finishes wrapping him up in all his layers and lifts him to her breast. He whimpers for a moment until the nipple hits his cheek and then he clamps on hard. He may not have teeth but his cheek muscles sure must have near Slayer strength. Buffy breathes fast for few moments until she feels the harsh tingling in her breasts that signifies the milk coming in. Ah. The relief is immense and then she sinks back into the pillows, letting the good part of the feeding lull her into a semi-trance. The baby is sucking ecstatically, his tiny fists beating a tattoo against her breast.

It doesn't last long. Phoenix has exhausted himself with his strenuous efforts and falls asleep, a little milk escaping from his pursed pink lips. He frowns and curls his hands and then relaxes into a deeper sleep.

Buffy doesn't want to put him down right away. It's such a nice feeling, that warm little body tight against her own. Her gaze drifts away from the baby, to the window where the first gray signs of dawn are tinting the curtain. Something alerts her and she looks down into Spike's eyes, almost as dark a blue as the baby's, looking up at her sleepily. His face is sweet and unguarded, nothing like his expression when he's awake and alert lately, and her heart lurches in her chest, which it does whenever she looks at him these days.

She can't be as happy as she should be now, because she can't forget what happened the other day. Dawn and Spike. She doesn't know exactly what went down, but she knows Spike, and the only way he would have gotten rid of that much anger was violence or sex. She doesn't want to know and yet she does. She also knows that Spike loves her and never stopped, but those fifteen minutes he was out of her sight hurt so much that she can feel her heart contracting whenever she looks at him.

It isn't fair. Hasn't she been punished enough? Was suffering the attentions of Zombie Spike and nearly dying not enough punishment for her thoughtless acts in conceiving Phoenix? There's no judge she can appeal to on her behalf. She can just hope the sharp squeezing pain will dull over time.

Spike wakes up more fully and lazily lifts a hand to cup her breast. "Buffy," he murmurs, his voice still thick and fuzzy with sleep.

"Go back to sleep, honey," Buffy says softly. "Feeney's fed already."

Spike's eyelids droop again and after snuggling up to her more closely, she sees him sink back into sleep. His instinctive reaction to seek her warmth and familiarity is much more bearable than his wariness and attempts at acting normal when he's completely awake.

Buffy puts the baby down and tries to go back to sleep herself, but she's too alert and her thoughts keep meandering back to the very subject she'd like to forget. Spike and Dawn. Who should she be angry at? At Spike, for using her sister, or at Dawn, for going after her man? Her first impulse at seeing their guilty faces was primal, primitive woman growling 'stay away from my man', but now she's had a few days to mull it over things aren't as simple as that.

Why did Spike do it? Is it her fault? Driving him to extremes with her bad decisions, or was he unable to restrain his vampire nature anymore? She wants to be angry with him but her feeling of guilt is so big that she doesn't really dare. She's too afraid of what he'll do if she starts the angry routine. No, he won't. He promised he would never leave.

And she can't really ignore the existence of Dawn for the rest of her life. Dawn was wronged; the harsh words Spike spoke to her hurt Buffy, too. Dawnie's her only real family. Should she stand up for her younger sister? This is such a mess. If this is what love is, wouldn't she be better off without it?

Suddenly Spike's blithely sleeping form annoys her. She's thinking deep difficult thoughts and he just sleeps on, the insensitive jerk. Look at him, all pretty, cream and pink against the white sheets.

She scoots closer to him and goes straight for the most effective way of waking him up. She grabs his balls and strokes them softly. The satiny skin of his cock jumps against her hand.

"Spike. Spike. What is love?"

"Love is a bloody tyrant," he mumbles. "Drives you hard, makes you do the awful, lashes you forward until your back is bloody and never lets up."

She guesses that is more or less what she's been thinking.

"Is it worth it, Spike? Did we make the right choices?"

Spike sits up and stretches hard. A neat way of disengaging from her without being direct about it. It stings. "Um. What time is it? Time to feed? Do I have to change him?"

"No, we're talking about love."

"Oh, right. Love." Spike scratches his head.

"What I said… dunno really. That's about big grand sweeping feelings. Burning and consuming. Dunno if I still think that's true. This is small potatoes, what we're doing, innit? Sleeping in one bed, taking turns with the baby, looking out for each other, but it's real," he says.

So much for the grand love he once professed to her. Will she ever get that back? He looks at her and then away, reluctance to talk further in every line of his face. They haven't really talked about things, just went on pretending it hadn't happened, it's just too fresh and raw too deal.

"What I just said, that maybe this is love, this, what we're doing right now? Being a family? There's no maybe about it. Made my mind up. This is it. I was wrong about trust being something for old marrieds. Trust is what we need right now."

"But Spike, we are old-marrieds."

He looks disconcerted for a moment, his expression forming a cute combination with his bed-hair, which he's combing and fretting into even wilder curls.

"So we are, love, so we are. Who'd have thought."

"You know what, I understand Willow. A forgetting spell would be a good thing right now," she says, hearing her own voice tiny and strangled from her throat. "How about erasing, say, the past ten months?"

Spike rubs the pad of his thumb over her hands. "Wouldn't want to forget the good things with the bad," he says. "Like Feeney."

"Yeah."

Spike cups her cheeks and leans her head against his shoulder. This is more intimacy than they've managed so far. It's better than holding him from behind in his sleep, but they're still not really looking each other in the face.

"It feels like someone attacked my heart with a cake mixer and made a right mess of it."

Buffy catches Spike's eye for a second but it's raw and harsh, what she sees there. Not yet, she guesses. She puts her hand on his heart. She never touches him without feeling his reaction travel through his whole body.

"It's okay if your heart is like a layered cake, Spike. I guess I'd be the chocolate, wouldn't I? And Phoenix the vanilla. That's okay by me. I'm used to not being vanilla girl now."

It's good, what they're doing, it makes it easier, like skating lightly over the icing on the cake, without delving too deep into the sticky dark brown layers.

"Yeah, you're my chocolate chip muffin. I'd eat you in a heartbeat."

"We'll be all right Spike, won't we? Let's go back to Florence as soon as we get a flight. I've really had enough of London for a while."

"We can't leave just now, pet. There are some people I have to check up on."

Buffy's face hardens. "Dawn?"

Spike refuses to back down his gaze. "Yeah. See if she's all right. Mostly Tara. 'S not right to let her carry Willow's problems."

"I don't know if Willow's problems are our concern anymore," Buffy says softly. "Hasn't this gone beyond looking after your friends? I think she's lost the right to call herself my friend."

"This is a first, Buffy. First time ever you've talked about not sticking to your high school pals like a burr."

He's looking at her now. So that gets his approval, huh? Maybe he always wanted her to cut loose from the Scoobies. No, it's not fair to think that.

"I would never do it if it wasn't for Phoenix. He's more important now than old friends, even one like Willow. Family's the most important…"

"Yeah," Spike says softly.

It's the subject from hell again. Why can't they just go on not talking about it?

"Okay. Willow. She's the head of a big organization, what can we do?" Buffy says, wrenching the conversation back on course with heroic effort.

"Point is, sweetheart, if they fire her, she's still a pissy, powerful witch. Then what?"

"Spike the vampire takes on responsibility for the world, is that it?"

"No. That would be silly."

But he shifts uncomfortably in her arms. "Dunno. The way you put it is daft, I agree, but still, I feel I should see to it that she's - out of action."

Buffy grows still. "You'd kill her?"

"Well, I couldn't, could I? She'd swat me like a fly. But now that you've said it, maybe. She'll never learn. Her magic needs to be dismantled, or if that's impossible, yeah, she should be put down."

"She's not a rabid dog!"

"She's a rabid witch. Who can control her?" Spike says.

"Tara seems to think she can."

"There's only so much love can do, Buff. I think she will repeat her sins."

Ouch, Spike. Don't say things like that. They were talking about Willow, which is a nice, safe subject.

"She hasn't been killing or anything, Spike. Isn't that a bit harsh?"

"I think we've just discovered the tip of her activities, and there's a whole nasty, oozing iceberg of evil acts we don't know about. If she was dealing with Gatekeepers, she must have contact with Wolfram& Hart. That can never be good. We can't expect Tara to keep all that in check. That's what we're talking to Giles about, innit?"

"What time is he coming?"

"Eleven-ish."

Buffy falls silent. She plucks at his sleeve and finally asks in a small voice. "You said that there was only so much love could do. Am I like a rabid dog kept in check by your love?"

Now that she's said it, she wishes she hadn't. Answers could be not of the good. "Well."

"But I meant well!" Buffy cries out. "It's not fair to compare me to Willow. I just wanted to give you a baby that looked like you."

Spike slowly combs his fingers through her hair. "I know that, sweetheart. But…"

Buffy casts down here eyes and her cheeks feel hot. She sighs tremulously. Spike slides his fingers under her eyes, and licks up the salty moisture.

"Buffy," he says, muffled in her hair.

She hears the suppressed tears in his voice and repeats his gesture back to him. His tears taste salty, like hers. They are the same. She carefully tiptoes her lips around his cheek to taste his, not really kissing yet, but maybe going there.

The shrilling of the bell makes them spring apart, almost guiltily, as if they're being illegal instead of couply.

"He's either really early, or it isn't Giles?"

"I'll go see," Spike says curtly and steps into his jeans, which are lying where he stepped out of them last night. He looks over his shoulder as he's leaving the room and buttoning himself up. "Better get some clothes on."

The moment is gone again; tight-faced Spike is back. Damn Giles.

TBC