Author's note: Hello everyone its been a while-This one is for all you GREAT reveiwers but especially Nessie, East and lil' Candy (I hope this answers ALL your questions.)! I love you all to bits! Also.. its going to be a long time before these two get back to SunnyD... I basically want to show that they have a life away from the Hellmouth.

Chapter XXXI - The Morning After Brings Weirdness and Revelations

The next day was strange. Buffy woke up in a room all to herself surrounded by more richness than she had ever come into contact with. For a few minutes she wondered if the lest few months had all be a dream. It really was too surreal. She snapped out of it when she heard William protest not being fed.

No, slayer, this was not a dream.

She picked up her son William.

Her son with Spike.

Spike the watcher.

She would never get used to it.

She had a family, a life in the middle of England. She was by all intents and purposes married to Spike and had children. She had never thought she would live long enough to have children.

She dressed William and dressed herself and made her way down to breakfast. With Spike and Alex's help of course, there was no way she would have made it on her own. This place was huge. Spike seemed to know where he was going and Alex-ever the hyper energetic teenager- seemed to have woken up early and explored the place.

Alex.

Alex was Buffy's enigma for this morning.

She says that she was their daughter and she sure did look like it. She was a spitting image of Spike, especially her blue eyes. Nowadays, she even acted like it, she bickered with Spike and changed William's nappies (OH god, Buffy was starting to TALK like them!). But when she had first appeared out of no where, she didn't know them. She didn't know any ofSpike's battle stories and Spike loved to brag about them. Surely he would have told her all about them, and yet she was clueless. She didn't know their any of their birthdays or anything else like that. She didn't speak of the place she came from, and the few times that Buffy and Spike asked her about it she had been all evasive and had 'subtley' changed the subject. Something was off.

She didn't miss her home. In fact, she didn't talk about it, at all.

And that was cause for a major inquiry.

Buffy was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice strange looks coming from both Alex, Spike and well, William-but he didn't really count. Buffy was usually either perky in the morning-from too much coffee-or grumbling at anything that moved, now she was neither. She just sat there and stared into space. Once breakfast was finished, she got up and wondered off, barely realizing where she was going, just looking around and pondering the mystery that was Alex's life.

Spike, of course, followed her.

"What's on your mind, slayer?" he asked curiously, when it was clear that she was quite lost and he needed to step in and steer her back to the more familliar part of the manor. She had looked up suddenly and seemed completely disoriented.

Buffy turned to him, she was not quite as surprised as she should've been that Spike was behind her. She snapped back to reality for a full second and was marginally grateful that he was there, because she was so lost.

"Alex." she informed him. "I was thinking about Alex."

Spike arched an eyebrow.

"The Minion?" he asked. "What about her?"

"It doesn't seem strange to you that she doesn't worry about her parents?" Buffy asked him as they turned a few corners and magically found themselves in a place she recognized.She glanced behind her and then back at Spike."The 'us' in her dimension?" she continued. "She didn't seem to know us when we she got to us, Spike."

"Slayer, what are talking about?" he asked.

"There is something going on she she is not telling us about it." She said. "I can't believe you can't see that! You! Mister Perceptive watcher-guy!"

Spike looked down.

"I knew that there was something up with the Minion." He said his voice terse, Buffy noticedthe slight clench in his jaw. He was obviously irked that she questioned his intuitiveness."I was hoping she would come to us in her own time."

Buffy stared at him for a moment and then rolled her eyes.

"Spike, you are sounding too much like a dad right now." She said "And it is so wigging me out."

"Slayer, I am a Dad." He said in anirked tone of voice. "Deal. With. It."

"Right." Buffy conceded, she took a deep breath."So with the dealing. Delt. Right. Got to the Past tense and will now officially move on." She paused and then looked at him expectantly. "Well, what are we going to do about it?"

"We're supposed to do something about it?"

"Yahuh!"

"I though you had delt with the not doing anything about it."

"I dealt with the Dad thing, Spike!"

"Sorry can you please translate it for those of us who don't speak Buffy?"

"you can too Speak Buffy! How can you have gone all this time and not have picked it up! Spike, Alex speaks Buffy."

"Well, you're right then, something is totally wrong with her."

"ARGH! Wake up and smell the seaweed, Spike!" Buffy snapped slapping him lightly on the chest. "We're sorta like her parents, and if we don't do anything who the hell will?" Buffy demanded. "Tell me that! huh? Mister DAD?" when spike said nothing she rolled her eyes. "I don't see how nothing can be done here! We've got to talk to her or interrogate her, or read her secret fluffy pink diary! Or...you know snoop around or even ask her subtle questions like-"

"Slayer, we can't just do things like that." He said. "WE just can't go bloody asking her things like that!"

"We can send her back!"

"What?"

"Send her back." Buffy repeated, hating herself for thinking it but knowing that it had to be thought. Knowing that it had to be put out there. "I'm sure the other dimension paretns want her back! If that was me then I'm so sure that I would be comepletely worried about her! I would want her back!IfI was other-dimension-Buffy I would be tearing my hair out trying to findher,I'd befrantic, and doing spells, and even, maybe, calling the police-"

"Slayer, get a hold of yourself." Spike interrupted her, she had begun to pace and her flaling actually endangered the art work on the walls around her. "We've got to start acting like bloody adults and let Alex come around by herself. Now you can't just go barging in like the cavalry's come and go about reading her secret fluffy pink" He paused and shook his head. "-you know that is a strange visual, so I'm not even going to go into it. And most of all we can't fling her into some inter dimensional portal! Point is, We can't just ask her something like that!"

"Ask who something like what?"

Spike and Buffy turned around to see Alex walking up to them with a little travel packet of tapioca pudding. She glanced from her father to her mother and arched an eyebrow.

Buffy, however, glanced down at the pudding and then back up to Alex.

"Pudding in morning?" she asked in her most 'mom' voice.

Alex followed Buffy's gaze down to the offending tapioca packet.

"You're changing the subject." She said. "This is a bad sign."

Buffy gestured to her and smiled smugly at Spike.

"See? She speaks Buffy."

She locked eyes with the slayer.

"Something going on?"

When Buffy said nothing, she looked at Spike and arched the Wescott eye brow. It was Buffy, however, that answered her.

"What was it like in your dimension, Lexy?"

Spike rolled his eyes. Subtle as a brisk to the head.

Alex shrugged.

"As normal as can be for a household with a vampire and a slayer." She said with a smile spooning another glob of pudding into her mouth.

"Gotta be a little more substantial than that, Alex."

Alex tilted her head, Spike had called her 'Alex' this was serious. He almost never called her 'Alex'.

"I don't understand."

"Minion," Spike said lowly. "I think what the slayer is saying-not very eloquently I might add, is that-"

Alex froze. Her spoon in her mouth. The word she had over heard from their conversation had just occured to her.

"Don't send me back."

"What?" buffy and Spike deamnded at the same time.

"You want to know what happened to you where I am." She said, in an oddly steady voice. "Well, where I was." She looked down, Spike and Buffy both opened their mouths to protest but Alex looked up and stopped them, holding her hands out in front of her. (One still clutching her tapioca pudding.)

"Where I was," she continued. "You were dead."

Spike and Buffy were floored. They both stared at her in shocked silence. Alex looked back at them with an expression intense and far away at the same time.

"What?" Buffy gasped out.

Alex sighed; she could feel tears forming in her eyes. She didn't bother to hide them.

"You were dead." She repeated, stronger now, more present. "And so was almost everyone else, or as good as dead anyway." She turned to Buffy. "You went up against an evil you didn't know how to fight-the first something?and you lost, but not before you drove Spike away and then you made him insane, got knocked up and then he died." Alex's voice got really quiet. "He died for you and you never really got it. You didn't love him until you realized you were having me. When I knew you, you-you didn't like to look at me much. Aunt Dawn said it was because I looked too much like Spike. I don't blame you. You always tried, but the world just didn't help. A hoard of demons killed you when I was ten." She said. "I never got to know my father I never got to see what he looked like." she paused noticing Spike's flinch. "Sorry, Daddy, but you died long before I was born. I barely even got to know my mom-Buffy, always off, always angry-and then you-" Alex broke off and looked away.

"I'm sorry, Lexy." Buffy said. She suddenly felt horrible, she reached out to pull her daughter into a hug. Alex relaxed into the slayers embrace.

"No." she said. "Don't. You didn't do that. She did,although youreally didn'tdo anything wrong.You're here she's not. She was never really my mother. I think she was too broken to really love me...You do." She paused and waited for them to correct her. She was infinitely glad when they did not. "That didn't happen here. This is a totally different place." She suddenly pushed Buffy away and looked fearfully from her to Spike. "You aren't thinking of sending me back, are you? Look, I know that might ruin the space and time whatever-thingy but you can't send me back. I'm basically passed from one scooby to the next not really wanted anywhere. Please tell me you won't send me back?"

Spike glanced at Buffy the understanding took all of a moment.

He reached out to her, drew her into his arms and kissed her on the forehead.

"You know what? I think we're doing them a favor keeping this one away." He said in a loud voice. "Depriving them of yet another juvenile delinquent. I think we deserve a bloody medal, don't you, Slayer?"

Buffy's face broke out into a smile.

"Of course." She said. "I guess we're stuck with her."

"Damn!" Spike mock cursed. "I thought it might be fun to fling someone into an inter-dimensional portal."

Alex laughed, she grinned at both of the gratefully and then somehow managed to get down the rest of her pudding.

"It's not all it's cracked up to be."