Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from BtVS.
Many thanks to ObscureBookWyrm, my wonderful beta.
The Dawning
Chapter Four
Xander took a breath, searched deep, and rallied his manhood.
When Buffy first came up pregnant with what he now affectionately thought of as her demon spawn, he had been unsettled, angry, and he'd admit it now, just a little bit disgusted.
But seeing Dawn, holding her….that was a whole other world of cool. She was…well what she wasn't was demon spawn. She wasn't disgusting, she was absolutely perfect. And Xander Harris was man enough to admit it.
What his manhood was having a hard time admitting to was the fact that there were other demons out there that weren't a threat to mankind. That the supernatural world was made up of just as many innocents as there were in the human world.
What Xander Harris was having a hard time wrapping his head around was that there were dozens of baby demons out there with no parents, no family, and no home, because some of his human compadres murdered and tortured them.
That was putting quite the dent in his personal shields of denial.
And, holy frijoles, Anya just wouldn't shut up about it. If she'd just not mention it he could forget about it. Ignore it, just like he ignored his dad getting drunk and slapping his mom around. Just like he ignored all the insults and abuses he suffered through grade school and most of high school.
Xander was a big believer in denial. It had treated him pretty good throughout his entire life, and in return he nurtured it on ignorance and bigotry.
But Anya just wouldn't shut up.
She had visited Spike's war orphanage in the sewers several times since they found out about it during the baby shower. They all did. Willow and Tara spent time every day teaching classes in science, math, and art, while Giles concentrated on language arts and history. Mrs. Summers had taken up collecting donations of blankets, toys, and food.
And Anya, it seemed, went a couple times a week to help the younger demons master their little demon monster skills like hiding their true faces behind an innocent guise. Also, since she was so well versed in many different types of demons, she talked to them about their heritage and culture, so they wouldn't forget where they came from, now they no longer had any family of their own.
Every time she came back from that hell-spawned place she would yammer on about it. About how cold it was down in the sewers. How dank and unhealthy. How crowded it was. How terrible it was that they never got to see the light anymore.
And fuck, if that didn't hit Xander hard.
Thoughts of those innocent demon children had been on his mind when he went out with his boss to do an inspection on the old Ravenstone mansion a few miles out of town. The sprawling estate hadn't seen an owner in three decades, and the city wanted it sold, preferably to someone who'd either tear it down or repair the blight. No one in Sunnydale had the resources to do either. It would be a miracle if it sold at auction, and if it did, it would be for a song.
Xander knew what needed to be done. He just didn't feel very comfortable about it.
He knocked on the reinforced steel door, the hollow thumps reverberating through the dank sewer. A slot door slid open, revealing wintery gray eyes and scaly skin. Xander cleared his throat, feeling foolish. Uttering pass phrases felt a little too Cold War for him to take seriously.
"I'm looking for paradise lost."
The slide door slammed shut, and after a few tense moments the large steel door creaked open. Deep bass flooded the sewer, making Xander's pulse jump. In the months since Spike opened Eden, he'd never once visited, having no desire to hang out with demons in any capacity.
Xander stepped inside, taking a quick, sweeping glance that revealed mostly shadows and a lot of naked skin. His eyes skipped back to the bouncer, recognizing Spike's right hand man, Dekker, who he'd met in passing a few times, the most memorable being when they fled to Spike's safe house right after the Initiative's attack on Buffy in the graveyard.
"Hey, I'm Xander. Buffy's friend."
If possible the unwelcoming look on the gray-skinned demon became more so. It was clear that Buffy was persona non grata at Eden.
He had always associated himself with Buffy. At her heroic edges was where he defined the innate core of himself. He drew his identity from being Buffy's friend. By Dekker rejecting her, Xander felt rejected himself.
Disconcerted, Xander cast around for another way to identify himself, to ingratiate himself to this demon so he could get the information he needed.
"You know, Anyanka's boyfriend."
The words stuttered off his tongue. He rarely identified himself as such. As belonging to someone. While proprietary and foreign sounding, Xander found he liked it quite a bit. The idea that he belonged to a woman. Not platonically as he did to Willow and Buffy when he identified himself as being their friend, but romantically. To be possessed body and soul by a woman who accepted him for who he was.
"You're Anyanka's man?" The demon scanned him, black lips curling over yellow incisors.
Dekker's derisive tone forced Xander's chin up and his shoulders back. Xander was more than aware of his shortcomings. His father had expounded upon them nearly every day of his life until Xander had finally moved out of their home and into one of his own. He certainly didn't need a demon to take up the slack.
"You got a problem with that?"
Dekker winged a dark brow at him. "She can do better."
"No arguing that," Xander growled, and Dekker looked surprised at the admission. "But she chose me, and that's saying something, isn't it?"
Xander felt pride at his words. He couldn't dispute what Dekker said. Anya could most certainly do better than him, but she still chose him anyways. Still allowed him to walk beside her, hold her hand, wrap himself around her at night. Fuck, she let him love her. That made him her man and he would be damned if he'd let this demon spit on that.
Dekker crossed his arms, his features relaxing, almost accepting. "Yes it is. What is it that Anyanka's Chosen needs?"
Xander rubbed his palm on the back of his neck, now just feeling weird. He didn't really understand demons sometimes. Hell, most of the time.
"Is Spike around? I need to talk to him."
"The boss ain't here right now. But he should be in about an hour or so. You can wait. Enjoy the show." Dekker swept his hand towards the stage.
Xander's eyes followed the gesture, only to immediately drop and stare at the red carpeting between his feet.
"Are you trying to get me killed? Do you know what Anya did before she got turned into a human? If she finds out that I so much as looked, I'll wake up with bits missing. Very. Important. Bits."
Dekker's laughter rumbled over him. "You human males. So afraid of your mates. You should go sit over there with the other pussy-whipped human. He doesn't watch the floor show either."
Dekker motioned to a bench along the wall near the door. An impressive-looking man sat, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his thighs, hands clasped between his knees. Xander turned to see what he was staring at. An exotically beautiful woman flitted by, serving tall drinks the same carnelian color as her hair to a cluster of loud, cat-calling demons.
"You'll tell Spike I'm here when he gets in?"
Dekker nodded, and Xander reluctantly sat down on the bench, leaving a respectable three feet between him and the other man.
After a few minutes, Xander started to fidget, unable to remain unengaged for long.
"So, come here often?"
The man turned his pale, glacier blue eyes on him. His gaze swept over Xander, leaving a chill in its wake.
"Xander Harris," the man said impassively.
Xander's brows winged up. "Do I know you?"
"Name's Graham. I was…am…part of the Initiative. I was on Riley Finn's squad. It was mandatory that we knew all of the Slayer's associates on sight."
A ten-pound ball dropping on his chest couldn't have shocked Xander more. He shot out of the seat, hands fisted at his sides, shaking with rage.
"You fucking bastard!" Xander glanced around him, uncertain of what to do. He only knew that he wanted this man dead. For what he'd done to Buffy and Dawn. For how the Initiative scared his Anya. "Hey!" He took a step towards Dekker certain the bouncer didn't know who he'd let into his club.
Graham grabbed him by the wrist with steely fingers, cutting him off. In one yank, he pulled Xander off his feet and onto the bench next to him.
"Knock it off," Graham hissed.
"Hells no. I'm telling every demon in here who you are, then I'm gonna watch them rip you to shreds."
"They know," Graham ground out from between his straight, white teeth. "I'm here with Spike's permission."
"What?" Xander didn't know if he should be shocked or appalled or just plain stupefied.
"I did a favor for him, so I get a free pass at his club."
Acid bile burned a path up Xander's throat. "So, what? You can look at all the innocent demon girls you'd like to hurt?"
Graham shook him off with a disgusted look, returning his gaze to the beautiful pink demon. Xander tracked his gaze, before rounding on the man in fury.
"If you hurt her, Spike'll skin you alive, and I'll piss on your bloody body." Xander had never been so viciously bloodthirsty before, but all he could think about was Anya and all the different ways the Initiative could hurt her.
"I would never hurt Chantilly!" Graham turned on him, lips turned up in an impressive snarl, shocking Xander for a second time that night.
It sounded like the man actually cared…about a demon.
"What. The. Fuck, man?"
Graham scrubbed his face with both his hands, his shoulders slumping. Holding his face, he braced his elbows on his spread thighs.
"I don't fucking know!" the man confessed. "I just know I fucked up. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I didn't join the Army to be a part of something so fucking fucked up. Fucking demons! How was I supposed to know? What was I supposed to do? And Walsh and Patel and Riley! What was I supposed to do?"
Graham turned his agonized gaze to him and Xander's chest constricted. He'd never seen someone so haunted. So regretful.
"I fucking tried to do my duty. To be a solider. But what do you do when that conflicts with being a good man? I couldn't just sit back and watch. I had to save her. But I didn't. I was too late," Graham choked out.
"Jesus, man." Xander didn't know what to say. What could he say?
"Let's just sit here, okay, man? No more talking." Graham returned his tortured eyes to Chantilly, watching as some strange demon slapped her on the ass as she walked by.
Xander, in turn, watched Graham's profile, noting the squared, tensed jaw, hunched shoulders, and very large, painfully knotted fists.
"Yeah, okay, man. No talking."
8888
Until the moment in the graveyard when Spike declared that he wouldn't ever leave Buffy, a part of him had been harboring the thought of taking Dawn and running. Just leaving the Slayer, Sunnydale, and everything he'd built behind and starting a new life. Perhaps finding a woman who'd love him. Love his Bit.
But as he pressed Buffy into the ground, covering her body with his, breathing in her scent of honey and vanilla, he knew he'd never leave her. Until death. Either hers or his. His vow to her.
A brief, murderous thought crossed his mind in that moment. The idea that taking her life would free him from the leash she had him on. But the thought had sickened him even as it passed over his lips.
He could no easier take Buffy's life than he could Dawn's.
Forever, he was hers. It was a plague upon his nonexistent soul. A disease on his heart. Centuries from now, he doubted he would have recovered from loving Buffy Summers. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to. Because besides all the pain and suffering loving her had caused him, it was also the best thing to ever happen to him.
Before her, he was stagnant. A destructive monster who lived for the smash and bash in an unending string of nights that would have gone on for an eternity until he dusted. But Buffy had derailed him from that path, showing him a new way of life that enamored him from the get go.
He liked who he was now. A businessman, a contributor, a man responsible for a community that accepted him. He was someone more than a mere master of a few fledges. He was a leader.
He had Buffy and his child to thank for that. They were a catalyst for change in his life.
No, he wouldn't let his devastation at losing Buffy run him out of town. He wouldn't scarper away with his tail tucked in between his legs like a cowardly dog.
Men, real men, didn't run when things became hard. They stood strong in their conviction, accepted their responsibilities, and learned from their mistakes. And a man was what Spike was now. Not a monster. Never a monster.
Spike let himself through the hidden passage into his office to find Chrysie at his desk. It wasn't uncommon to see the techno-inclined demon accessing his computer, updating firewalls or installing some fancy new software.
The gorgeous demon had too many brains to be stripping, and Spike had told her so. Even offered to help her go to school. The woman belonged at MIT getting a degree to work in the tech world, making millions off developing some impossibly small gizmo to organize people's lives, not pottering around on his archaic PC.
As much as he enjoyed Chrysie's company, it wasn't her skills he needed at the moment. She wasn't the only demoness who worked for him with unique talents.
"Get out and send in Tayla." Spike wasn't normally terse with his girls, but at the moment he didn't give a flying fuck about a woman's, any woman's, feelings.
Chrysie tensed at the computer, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. She cast him an enigmatic look over her bare shoulder. She was dressed in a tiny bit of nothing in preparation for her next dance.
The girls' state of dress, or undress as it were, wasn't something that Spike usually registered. But the way Chrysie's eyes went from shocked to calculatingly seductive made Spike take notice of every little detail.
She curved her spine as she stood from his chair, pushing out a spectacularly rounded arse barely covered under a hot pink mini that contrasted nicely with her skin tone, the midnight blue shade of gloaming in Scotland.
Pivoting on her stripper heels, she rubbed her hands over her hips in a seduction meant to discretely lower her hemline, while only succeeding in lowering her bodice until the upper arcs of her lilac areolae showed.
Spike took an immediate and decisive step back, cocking his head to the side to study her. One black brow rose when he came to a satisfactory conclusion.
"Never realized you were the hero type," Spike stated, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Hero?" Chrysie smiled, hips dipping provocatively as she strolled towards him. She trailed one white painted nail along his forearm, smiling appreciatively as the muscle bunched under her touch. "What are you on about?"
Face impassive, Spike didn't move as he stared down at her. Her lilac-tinged eyes seemed wide and innocent, if it weren't for the haunted darkness behind them.
"Throwing yourself at the Big Bad to save the other girls from my evil, monstrous clutches."
He almost chuckled at the brief flicker of surprise on her beautiful face.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Spike backed out of her reach, glaring at her. "You really think so little of me?"
Chrysie dropped all pretenses, her face mutating from seductive to serious. "Everyone knows the Slayer…" Once glance at Spike's vicious face had her own expression shutting down into something dark and bitter. "Men have needs. It's only natural to want to see to them, especially when there's a stable of women eager to keep their jobs that can do just that."
"Natural?" Spike snarled.
Chrysie shrugged, not at all affected by his insulted demeanor. She gave him a cold, considering glance that made Spike feel as if all the respect he thought he'd gained had been nothing more than an illusion. "You are a man."
"That I am, luv. But I'm not the sort of man who forces himself on a lady."
Chrysie lifted her chin, expression detached. "No ladies here. We aren't the sort that men find worthy of respect."
Spike canted forward on the balls of his feet, clipping out his words in a snarl. "Women should be treated with respect whatever their vocation."
"That may be something one of those pansy-ass moral types spout, while practicing something entirely different, mind you, but you are evil." The silent question in her eyes begged him to dispute her.
"Not that kind of evil."
She eyed him closely, her face losing its hardness. "I don't think you're any kind of evil."
Spike shook his head, looking away from her in shame for the first time. "You'd be wrong, luv. I'm all kinds of evil. Just not that kind." He hesitated. "Not anymore, leastwise. Can't say I wouldn't have done different in the past."
His past, it seemed, kept coming around to bite him in the arse. One hundred and twenty years of living life unfettered by society's conventions had left him emotionally and morally stunted. He'd been nothing more than a pleasure-seeking adolescent, whose only concerns were the happiness and wellbeing of himself and Drusilla. Now, he was trying to live life as a man, responsible not only for a family, but an entire community, and experiencing some pretty serious growing pains while doing so.
Indicating the matter was closed, he crossed to his wet bar to pour himself a drink, speaking to Chrysie over his shoulder. "I wanted to talk to Tayla about some finances." Now that he'd fully committed to staying in Sunnydale, he needed to set up a deposit into Joyce's account to help care for the baby. He knew Buffy wouldn't take any sort of financial assistance from him, but Joyce was a pragmatic woman.
Tayla, he had found over the past few months, was a genius at numbers, despite being almost painfully shy. How the girl ended up in stripping he had no idea. But he also knew she had been a favorite of the last owner, which didn't bode well for her treatment in the past. She was the lowest earner in his lineup but he didn't have the heart to fire her. Instead he'd been slowly but surely transitioning her into the role of his accountant.
"Well, it's going to have to wait," Chrysie informed him. "There's some kid outside who wants to talk to you. Says his name is Xander."
Spike threw back a slug of expensive brandy, barely tasting it. His entire body hurt from his run-in with Buffy, not to mention his heart; the last thing he wanted was a confrontation with one of her little Scoobie snacks. Especially the most hostile one.
"Fine, whatever. Send him in."
Spike made himself busy by pouring himself two more drinks by the time Xander entered his office.
"Make it quick, boy. I don't feel like listening to your shite tonight," Spike told the kid without turning away from the bar.
"Who peed in your Wheaties?"
Spike growled, briefly entertaining the idea of telling him what a bitch his little teen dream slayer was, but he restrained himself, taking his drink to his desk to sit.
Xander watched him, making no move to speak. Finally, the boy crossed the leather armchair across the desk from Spike.
"Women trouble?" Xander ventured.
"What makes you say that?" Spike tossed back the last of his drink, eying the bottle he left behind at the wet bar.
"'Cause I figure women are the only creatures on earth to turn men inside out." Xander looked away, muttering. "In Anya's case that's literally a true statement."
"What do you know of it?"
"Remember when I didn't show up at the painting party? Yeah, Anya…well, let's say she gave me a lot of free time to think on the error of my ways."
Spike snorted. "That's all, boy? She cut you off from her juicy little quim? How you must've suffered," he sneered, a mean glint in his eye.
Xander shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Why do you keep doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Calling me boy."
"It's what you are, innit?"
"You sound like Angel," Xander muttered, not meeting the vampire's eyes. He jumped out of his seat when Spike threw his crystal tumbler across the room, shattering it against the wall.
"I'm nothin' like that wanker!"
"You're sure as fuck acting like it," Xander shouted back. "Brooding. Angry. Feeling sorry for yourself in a dark room. All you need is a huge fucking fireplace and some boring, dusty book."
Spike leaned his knuckles on his smoke-glass desk, breathing heavily. He opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him. Slowly he sat back in his chair, Xander cautiously following suit.
"Bloody hell."
"Want to talk about it?" Xander offered.
"No."
They sat in silence. Finally, Xander crossed the room to the mini-fridge beneath the bar and pulled out two Coronas. He twisted the caps off, handing one to Spike.
"I think you've had enough of the hard stuff for tonight."
"Takes more than that for a vampire to get pissed," Spike said, accepting the beer. He downed most of the brew before placing the bottle on his desk. "She's never going to let me back into her life. Into Dawn's life. One mistake and I've lost everything. My woman. My child. All I've got left is this fucking club."
Xander looked down at his lap, picking at the label on his beer. "You didn't make a mistake."
Spike looked at him sharply. "What?"
Xander cleared his throat, looking up to meet the vampire's eyes straight on. "You didn't make a mistake. I can't say what it's like to have a kid, but I know if someone threatened Anya the way Riley did, I'd of killed him too."
Spike took another swig of beer, knee bouncing beneath his desk. "That wasn't my mistake. It was going after the others."
Xander contemplated Spike's words, finally shaking his head.
"So you're saying you would've hunted down those men?" Disbelief glinted in Spike's eye, but behind that, a tiny gleam of hope blossomed.
"No. I wouldn't have."
The hope died. Spike sighed, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his eyes.
Xander leaned forward, projecting an unfamiliar mien of seriousness. "I wouldn't have hunted them down, not because I wouldn't have wanted to, but because I don't have the skills to do it. I think if I was you, strong like you, I would've done it. Would've made sure they couldn't come back and hurt my girl."
Spike slowly dropped his hand to look at Xander. The boy…no, the man…looked him straight in the eye.
Uncomfortable with the small sense of comradery between them, Spike looked away to take another swig of his beer.
"So why are you here?"
Shaking off the heaviness in the room, Xander leaned forward in his chair. "How do you feel about owning property?"
Spike raised a brow and listened while the man outlined his plan.