Kindred

By Sweetprincipale

Set in early Season Five. When Dracula called Buffy 'kindred'', he was doing a bit more than just saying they had a lot in common. Hungry for knowledge of herself and her power, Buffy didn't realize what kind of connection he had forged with her until he left town, and the damage was done. Hoping to break his hold over her, Buffy requests help from Spike. However, the way you break the hold of one vampire is to let another one possess you more fully. But, it'll only be temporary, right? Simple business, that's all…

Dedicated to: My wonderful writing community and friendly readers and reviewers! Thank you for being a wonderful outlet in a trying time. I hope these stories keep you entertained and give you an outlet, too!

Part XXVIII

"Mornin', Joyce," Spike smiled charmingly and held out a tray. "Toast and tea. I tried to make eggs, but we're out." He looked apologetic.

Joyce stopped dead in her tracks as she entered the dining room, heels on, lovely black skirt and silky blouse ensemble, perfect for showing people new pieces. Although, she'd considered wearing jeans and a ratty t-shirt and hanging a closed sign out front. She needed to clear out the backroom, clean it up, and unpack the larger pieces due to be delivered that day. Thanks to the interest of the recent showing and the prestige of other big gallery owners, she already had emails from people up and down the West Coast, even from Portland. It should be a big day.

And it started with a vampire apologizing for her being out of eggs. No, ever odder. "We're out of eggs." Like he lives here. "I used a lot to make the quiche. I haven't been to the store and Buffy was never one for shopping- unless it involved clothes, not groceries.

Spike shook his head. "She should eat a bit more. Slayer metabolism, you know. But she loves your cookin'. Did you see her demolish the rest of the quiche?"

Joyce laughed without warning and found her feet heading to the table. "I did notice. I haven't seen her eat like that since-" she frowned. "Well, since her father and I split up."

"Hmm." Spike poured a cup for himself. Buffy was in the shower. He'd wanted to join her, but she pointed out that it would surely lead to his premature second death by mom-icide. "D'you- d'you think she only tucks in when she's happy?"

"I thought it was about being the right size for the in-crowd at school and cheerleading. Teenage girls can be vicious."

"Very lethal." Spike recalled certain moments of his early acquaintance with the Slayer.

Joyce kept talking, more to herself than to him as she looked curiously at the neatly sliced and buttered toast, just the right amount of jam, too. "But, she was a Slayer… even before the divorce. She didn't need to watch the calories, did she?"

"I wouldn't think so. I've seen 'em in every shape and size in my day, but if a Slayer wants to put on any weight, she'd have to work on it. Can't imagine doing what she does as a human. Even as one of the 'immortal' types, I'm done in after a few rounds with her. I'd need at least a couple gallons to -"

The conversation ground to an uncomfortable halt. Joyce was tempted to push the boundaries of her knowledge and ask him exactly what he had done- but did that matter now?

Hell, yes, it mattered.

But it didn't matter as much as what he would do from now on. "I think she relaxes and snacks more when she's less stressed. This has to be some of the worst stress she's ever experienced, and it breaks my heart to say she has experienced some pretty huge, no, some unfathomable amounts of stress already and she's not even twenty."

"Not even-"

"Her birthday is in January."

"Good to know."

"So, apparently, you make her less stressed. Happy."

"I do my best. She makes me happy, too."

She hummed thoughtfully in to her cup. Perfectly sweetened, too. "You seem to know a lot about how to make perfect toast and tea."

Spike blinked. "It's hot bread and hot water." When Joyce's pursed lips indicated that she didn't buy that, he looked a bit bashful. "Well, I used to look after my mum at night when the cook left. She didn't sleep much at the- toward the end. I would always bring her toast and tea if she would eat. But uh- she stopped eating much. Toward the end."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Although, she would be deceased now, at any rate?"

"She would." His form stiffened. His face was set, eyes somehow more liquid when everything else went rigid.

Joyce knew that look of pain. She didn't expect it on a demon's face. No, that wasn't true. She expected Angel to look permanently sad or distraught. Spike actually seemed to smile and joke, get angry or flustered- Spike has a whole human range of emotions. And that one was grief, regret, sadness so deep that he couldn't cover it up or smile through it. Just shut over.

Like a person.

"How come you're more human than the others?" Joyce suddenly whispered.

"I… I like life," Spike answered, surprised by her questions. "Lotta vamps enjoy the death bit more. They love all they can kill. I love all I can do. Buffy's amazing. She can do anything, you know."

"She is amazing. I'm glad you see that."

"More tea?" Spike offered, largely to prevent himself from pouring out a torrent of lyrical poetry about just how utterly amazing she was and how he was the luckiest man in the world, no, in history, to have her as his wife.

Joyce looked down. Her cup was surprisingly empty. She supposed it was part of constantly sipping to cover pauses where she didn't know what to say or how to feel. "Yes, thank you."

"Kettle's still hot."


"I'm ready to head to Giles'!" Buffy hopped down the stairs, bouncing along in a one of her sleeveless shirts with the high necks, summer wear for the vampirically wed. She walked into the dining room to see her drop-dead gorgeous groom discussing the difference between marmalade and lemon curd, his head close to her mother's as they looked through an old cookbook of her great-grandmother's.

"Mornin', Slayer. Brekkie?"

"Grandma Celia used to make her own lemon curd. Look, here's her handwritten recipe."

"All I remember is it required a shit load- pardon, a bloody great lot of eggs to make a big batch. No eggs in marmalade."

Buffy stared. "Uh…"

"Would you two stop at the store before or after you slay things and get some eggs? Two dozen. And six lemons. I think I want to try this." Joyce tapped the recipe. "I'll be out late, probably."

"Rupert would love some, I'm sure. You be careful bein' out late in this place." Spike suddenly frowned. Why hadn't this occurred to him before, how bloody dangerous this place was for a single woman walkin' alone to her car late at night? "You park in a well-lit area and move fast, all right? You have a stake in your purse? Holy water? Cross?"

Joyce looked- touched. She actually patted his hand. "I won't be that late. I'll… I'll go put on a cross."

"You still ought to have holy water in your purse. Maybe in the glove box of your car. Slayer, can you get one of the bitty bottles from the chest by your bed?"

"You're so sweet," Joyce laughed gently. "I have to hurry."

"Here, Buffy, sit down and eat, I'll fetch it."

"Won't that be risky?" Joyce stood as he did.

"I'll wrap it in a towel or somethin'."

"I'll go get a necklace and the holy water," Buffy said slowly, eyes huge. "I need to leave the Twilight Zone anyway."


"All this time, you let her go around without a cross in her purse?" Spike demanded as the door shut.

"I- she- It's not like I expect her to attack them. I expect her to run away and let me attack them."

"Well, that's piss poor planning, you can't be everywhere at once!"

Buffy put down her uneaten piece of toast. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Peckish," he waggled an eyebrow and approached her, arms outstretched. "It's a bit sunny out. Shall we stay in for a little bit?"

"Tempting, but no. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah, why? Did you have a bad dream? Is Drac back?" His face was a map of concern.

"No, I'm just worried about you. Big bad boyfriend- I mean husband- is sitting here looking over recipes with the woman who wanted to unchip you by head-ectomy yesterday."

"Well… I always had respect for your mum."

"I know."

"And I feel like your lot is somehow part of my family," he shrugged uncomfortably, "and I always tried to be good to my family."

Her hand latched onto his elbow as he went to move past her into the kitchen. "I know that. I saw how great you were to Drusilla. You forgive and you love and you help. I see how amazing you are to me. Thanks, for being so good to her. We've had a rough time the past - um- five years." Buffy mentally took a moment to let that sink in. "You have awesome son-in-law qualities and you're uber charming. Glad to see that you're winning her over… I just didn't expect it be with lemon curd and tea, or- Spike?" Buffy stopped speaking suddenly as he struggled past her, stood stiff-armed over the sink. She hurried over to him, then hesitated. Slowly, she put her hand out and let it rest on his shoulder blade. It was shaking. When she sidled up to him, his eyes were red and one tear was trailing down the bridge of his nose, into the sink.

He hurts. So much. From the core of him, from the heart of him. It was one of those things she knew without asking or saying. She didn't know what could cause such utter pain. Short of losing her. Drusilla's leaving was a different kind of pain and one which she could sense shed gone a long way toward healing.

"Whatever it is," she finally whispered, head to his back, arms round his waist, "I'll help if I can. I'll always love you. You can - you can tell me whatever it is."

"I … miss my mum," Spike hissed, trying to keep his voice low and even so she couldn't hear the raggedness in it.

"I bet. I love my mom, too. We fight all the time, but I love her like crazy. I'm glad she likes you. I can tell she likes you already, even if it'll take awhile for her to come around." The shaking intensified. She bit her lip, looking for the right words. "Want to tell me about her?"

He nodded, but no words came out.

"I bet she had pretty blue eyes, like yours." Buffy nuzzled his back with her own cheek, suddenly somehow damp. He nodded. "She was smart." A vigorous nod. "She was so proud of you. She loved you so much, you never quit and she-" Buffy found herself cut off in mid-phrase, her arms suddenly full of sobbing Spike, shaking Spike, genuine, unfettered convulsing sobs pouring out of him. "What's the matter?" It was the most inadequate thing to say, but she couldn't manage more.

It took him a few seconds to even get the tears to a place where he could speak. He could never mourn her properly, with another. He had cried like this long ago, alone, having to hurry and hide, pretend nothing was wrong by the time he had to face Dru or Angelus.

When he spoke, it all poured out. "I never quit on her. Doctors said she wasn't going to last the winter. Another winter would take her, even a cold snap, or the damp… They talked about traveling- the hot, dry places, they said. It saved some people who had consumption. She didn't want to leave London, certainly not cross and come to America, the dry, sunny west. I didn't think she would last the trip. She was so weak already, by the time they suggested it."

"Oh, Baby." New waves of emotions sank into her, as tangible as if he'd put them in her hands. Helpless. Desperate. Frustrated. Rage. Loneliness.

"I thought… I thought I held her cure. I had died, y'see, and Dru brought me back up the next night, stronger than ever. I thought I could do the same for her."

Her body stilled even as his went limp, lying across her torso now as her hands dug desperately into his back, like if she held on hard enough she could keep him together. Watching him fall apart was harder than almost anything she'd experienced. She didn't know she could feel that much love for someone. So much love that it made losing Angel seem like a dull headache and this was walking through fire- and she wouldn't trade it. So much love that what he admitted next didn't repulse her or anger her in the least, only make her heart break for him. "I bet you tried. You tried to help her."

"Only wanted to make her well. I… the body was fading."

"I know."

"I came back and I hugged her. I told her we'd be together soon, not to fret. Told her it would all be all right." Spike tried to sit up and failed. "I never lied to her if I could help it. I never broke a promise to her- until that."

"Shhh. Shh, it's okay. She knows. She knows you tried to save her. It didn't work, but you tried."

"I bit her, Luv. I turned her. She came back … twisted. Mockery." Oh God. Like me? Gentle poet soul, turned destroyer and murderer. She'd be so ashamed of me. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to dive in deep after that, didn't mind, didn't give it a second thought. She was gone and it was already my fault.

The loneliness intensified. Agony, now. Buffy felt it in her stomach as if it were her own pain. She lifted his head. "She would be so proud of you, William."

"What?" Spike was startled enough to roughly push the gentle hands off his cheeks where they tenderly held his gaze.

"You were already a vampire, a demon, the 'mockery' and what do you? Your first thing is to go back and try to save someone's life! Spike, you were smart enough to try the only thing you could think of, the impossible, even when doctors gave you no real options. You loved her enough to try."

"Sweetheart, you're not hearing me. I k- killed my mum."

"Because she was dying. You wanted to keep her alive. You loved her so much and you were… scared. That you'd be lonely without her. I don't know what I'd do without you, Spike. If you-" Buffy swallowed suddenly. A deeply horrible, terrifying thought had just sprung into her head, one of the deepest fears she'd ever had- and it suddenly wasn't so awful. "Spike, I don't know what I'd do without you. If I died…" She swallowed. "This isn't about me. I'm sorry."

"What? What, Slayer?"

"I don't ever want to be a vampire. I've seen too many that aren't like you. But if there was a way to know that I'd be the same…"

Oh. Oh? Spike pulled her in close. "No deathwish for you, Slayer."

"I don't wish it. I wish for living, long, loooong lifetimes with you. Still," she looked up at him, her eyes damp, "I get what you did. Because I would do anything I had to do to try to stay with you. You're… you're the person in my lonely spot. Not lonely anymore. I'm not even sad as long as I can find you. I'm sorry about what happened with your mother, Spike, but if you were worried about telling me-"

"I was! Of course I was, I never- I try never to think about what happened, not if I can help it." He hadn't even told her the whole story, not yet.

"Interrupting," Buffy scolded gently and kissed his lips, tasting the cool salt of his tears. "If you were worried about me telling you how evil you were or how horrible it was- then you're being stupid."

"Slayer! Kick me in the exposed underbelly!" Spike was startled into a single harsh laugh.

"How could I hate you for trying to save someone you love, the only way you knew how? And when," she trod carefully over this next bit, "and when it turned her into something so wrong, you kept your promise. You made it better. You didn't let her body go on like that, did you?"

"No," he rasped out. "Not even for a whole night. I could tell it wasn't her in there. I felt like myself, just heightened in every way, especially the dark ways. She… she really was a demon only. A monster in an angel's face."

"She was so weak. She probably didn't have the strength to hang on like you did."

He'd never thought of it like that. "M-maybe she didn't even- maybe she went to heaven properly and didn't mingle at all with the mess I made. It really was only a demon using memories. I felt like I just let the demon in, it never got to take over."

"Knowing the stubbornness and contrariness that exists in you, and knowing it has to come from somewhere, that wouldn't surprise me," Buffy murmured.

Spike was silent. For the first time in years, he felt a little kernel of hope and peace in him when he thought about that night's terrible mistake. "I didn't want to tell you."

"I'm glad you did."

Silence. Slowly gaining their footing again, standing up, hands on each other at all times, at least a little bit, drawing comfort from the connection. "I love you, Spike."

"I can tell. I'm lucky. I'm amazed."

"Mmm. You wanna know a secret?" Buffy laced her hands through his and pulled him back through the kitchen, back through the dining room until they were standing in front of the stairs.

"All ears."

"You know how you're my hero?"

Even in despair, he couldn't help but puff up a bit. "Heard that, yeah."

"I liked Angel, and even Riley, because I thought I needed a hero to save me from myself, from being a freak and never being normal or understood, yadda yadda," She pushed past the horrors of being sixteen and falling for someone who could play the hero perfectly- but never very consistently.

"Is that the secret? Can't fault you for that. They can act, those two. I know. I've seen it."

"No, that's just my huge, mortifying teenage and freshman mistake. The secret is… I don't really feel heroic most of the time, more like I'm stumbling around, trying not to let people die, and I'm supposed to be good at it, I have a good guy with thousands of books to train me, I have friends who are good people who help me… I have five years of on the job training and I'm still messing up routinely. Like being bitten by the only vampire who's gone out of his way to get a publicist."

"Slayer, that's no secret, you're human. Of course you-"

"And you're still interrupting. Do I have to gag you?"

There was a pause. Buffy blushed. Spike looked mildly curious. "We could call it a whole new level of the quiet game, Slayer. Maybe teach you a new way to play Statues, too."

She stepped lightly on his toes and recaptured his attention. "That night, long ago, you knew nothing. You had no one good guiding you. You didn't have training or friends. The first thing you did, as a demon, was try to save the person you loved most. And that's why you're not just my hero, Spike. I think you're an actual hero. Maybe on the dark side of things, who has a lot of blood on his hands. I know you don't like being a 'white hat', but I think you're the real deal and you've been waiting for a chance to show off." She concluded with a tremulous smile and a wink.

She believes in me. Whole new ways of believing in me. Spike's head whirled. It was too much and too good to be true. "I don't think I'm all that, Pet."

"It's okay. It's my secret." She tugged him back up the stairs.

"What are we doing?"

"Comfort sex. It's a thing. If it's not a thing, it should be and it is now."

"Well, I'm nothing if not a dutiful husband."

"Exactly. But it's my turn to be a comforting wife. March, Mister." She pushed him in front of her, but with that damn stubbornness, he stopped half way up. "Geez, Spike! Do I have to beg?"

"No. Well, later, if you like," he smiled crookedly. "Thanks for everything you said, Beautiful. Tell you something. I always felt like I let my mother down. I couldn't get Drusilla to leave Angelus or the habits he tortured into her. I let her down, too. I promise you- even if it kills me, I'm not going to let you down." Tell me you believe me. Tell me you know I will, even though we really don't know a damn thing for sure.

"I know you will. I know I finally found the hero that comes through." She hesitated. She should remind him that she would come through just as much for him, that they were equals. But when she looked at the relief in his face, felt it pulsing from him like a heartbeat, she said nothing. Let him have this one. He deserves it.

To be continued...

I have often been asked to repost You an' Me Against the World. It's finally reworked and published as CrossRealms:You an' Me Against the World by S.C. Principale. It's free with Kindle Unlimited, so I hope if you've been missing it (or wanted to read it for the first time) you'll check it out!