It had been three whole months since he and Oz had started their new lives. Fourteen weeks, or close enough too to not matter, of ups and downs. Of good news and the omnipresent bad news. The current spell of bad news was that that skanky Goddess reject Glory was on the move again. This time her activities were enough to warrant Hera insisting they intervene. Spike didn't want to. He didn't want anything to do with aiding the Slayer. Not after she paid him back for loving her, and in the coin of her own choosing. And for what? For having loved her? Well, no more of that nonsense. He swore to himself, and the baby nestled within him, that he would never fall in love ever again. It just hurt far too much when it all went wrong, as it inevitably would.
Spike had to conclude that he was simply not destined for true love. Not the sexual kind anyway.
The hand not currently holding his favourite pump action shotgun rubbed over the starting to bloom bulge in his belly. As if knowing he was thinking about her, his Alicia seemed to move. Even though he knew that that was all in his imagination. She was too small for him to feel. Supposedly. He could feel her so very human warmth however. And he was positive he had felt her warmth shift. Heard her heart rate fluttering always in the back of his mind. It sounded like a very faint whisper of daddydaddydaddydaddy, and it was her heart singing for him.
Spike had vowed to her not to let her down. A private vow between father and child.
That was the only kind of love he would believe in from now on. Father and child. Not Sire and Childe, not vampire and Slayer, not even vampire and vampire. If he was feeling horny, well, that was what they had invented whores for after all. There was always sex available, and it wasn't as if he could catch anything anyway. And if he had his way, his Alicia would be the first ever child born of a male vampire to make it as the world's first official female Pope. He wouldn't count that bint in the fouteenth century, or when ever it had been. His Alicia would live a life of religious devotion and purity. Even if he had to convert to Catholicism to make it happen! Not that he seriously saw Hera letting that happen, but it was a nice pipe dream anyway.
He had never actually told Hera that he had decided to keep his child. The Goddess had somehow simply known when he reached that decision, that he would not be giving up his daughter. Especially to a family of strangers to do with as they would. Not that he thought that all foster and adoptive homes were filled with evil waiting to pounce on lost waifs and strays. He fully and readily admitted that he knew the difference between a Dickens novel and reality after all. It was just that he knew the evil undercurrents that lurked in his own world, and trusted in his own powers to navigate his Alicia around the dangerous eddies. An evil he didn't know, couldn't see, was too much for him. And love was just one such evil now. It had taken one hundred and twenty eight years, but he had finally lost all faith in love.
As always Alicia soothed him, he smiled and looked up into the grinning face of a half wolfed Oz.
"Don't say a word, dog breath!" He spoiled the snarl by smiling at his friend and partner.
Oz just grinned wider and rechecked his own shotgun.
"Be ready, you two, and cut the chatter. One wrong shot and the wrong person goes down for keeps." Hera was driving. She still didn't like Spike to drive, nor did Oz. Their joint over protectiveness drove the vampire nuts. Not that she let that influence her, she was a Goddess after all, and that automatically made her right. It said so in her Goddess handbook.
Knowing his friends fussed about him in order to protect him brought an almost living flutter to Spike's own heart. He didn't love them for it, he merely liked them, and would admit to nothing more. Looking up, towards the ludicrous scene before them, brought a sharp focus to his mind. A good score or more of actual mounted warriors, wearing chain mail no less, were attacking a somewhat dilapidated motor home. If it were a scene in a tv show or a movie he would have laughed at the implausibility of such a scene. Yet, here it was being enacted before him. Time to ride like a knight in shining convertible to the rescue of his fair Dawn.
He could hardly wait to see the look on her face as he rescued her, again.
She was the only reason he was willing to do this.
His friend needed help, his help, help only he and Oz could give.
Spike shared a look with his semi-lupine friend and saw the reflection of his own worries and fear in those so familiar features. Off they were both going, to rescue someone they had each loved. Someone who had hurt them in so totally unloving ways.
Were Buffy and Willow worth the effort?
He knew Dawn was. His sweet Dawn.
"For Dawn." He whispered to Oz.
"For Dawn!" The half wolf smiled back as best he could. The drawing back of his mouth over long wolfish fangs looked more fearsome than reassuring. But Spike knew exactly what to look for, and saw it.
He vamped into his game-face and muttered 'now' to Hera. Their mentor pushed the button that folded the roof back, exposing him to the sunlight, starting the clock ticking again. There was one hour, fifty-five minutes left on the clock.
With both young warriors sitting securely on the back edge of the back seat, blasting away for dear life - Hera finally saw just what it was her son had gotten out of his job as God of War. A pure, sensual rush of power and invincibility. Granted for the Gods it was true, but she rather suspected her young charges felt that self same rush too.
***
In the motor home, a frightened group of young people and their surrogate father tried to keep their enemy outside the door where they belonged. They had heard the car engine coming closer, getting higher in pitch, Dopplering towards them. They had hoped that the advent of another road user would frighten off their attackers somewhat. When it became obvious that they were not going to be swayed in their goal they all feared for the safety of the occupants in the other vehicle.
"Bloody Hell!" Giles swore from his position at the driver's seat. "I'm hallucinating, I have to be!" He stared out the windscreen at the figures sitting up on the back if the car heading towards them. Each had a shotgun. One was a werewolf and the other a game-faced vampire he readily recognised. But, it couldn't be, surely?
"What is it, Giles?" Buffy struggled forwards to look over his shoulder at the car still coming towards them. "It can't be! It is!" She squealed in undeniable delight. She leaned further forwards, as if that would give her eyes a clearer image of what, of who, lay before her.
"Can't be what? The seventh cavalry?" A queasy Xander muttered between struggles with travel sickness. He contemplated getting up to look, but decided that the others didn't need his stomach contents decorating them, so he tried his damnedest to sit still.
Then the first shotgun blasts sounded out, unnaturally loud in the desert. The thunderous explosions of the shotgun shells going off, the whinnying of the terrified horses, the roar of overstrained motor home engine didn't drown out the howls of animalistic glee from outside.
"It's way better than the cavalry, it's Oz... and Spike. I swear, it's Spike. He's outside, in the sun, not bursting into flames, being all vampiry. Shooting the bad guys and saving our asses, again!" The laughter in Buffy's voice was shrouded with a very real catch and sob. She pulled Spike's old, battered duster even closer and wiped yet another tear from her face. "Spike is really outside, he is really coming to our rescue. Like he's done before, only in daylight and with Oz. And shotguns and a woman." She raced to the back of the motor home to watch out the back windows as the car shot past them, did a hand-break turn the envy of any stunt driver and flew back towards them.
Everyone who was able crowded round to see for themselves just who it was that Buffy thought was Spike. As each of them realised that it was indeed Spike smiles broke out. In short order the enemy was vanquished. Those that survived fled, having discovered that discretion was, in truth, the better part of valour. Once sufficiently free of attackers, Giles pulled in to a long abandoned diner and stopped the vehicle. The smile that the sight of their erstwhile rescuers had brought to his face was still there. He had never, in all his life, been so glad to see a vampire and a werewolf.
Buffy in the lead, the occupants of the motor home erupted on to the cracked tarmac and rushed to the occupants of the white convertible that had pulled in after them.
"Why are we stopping?" Spike's distinctive voice asked, somewhere between vexed and frightened.
"Because I say so." The woman driving replied. She and Oz got out of the car and stood waiting the arrival of those they had saved, and for Spike to decide he had to face his fears.
Reluctantly, Spike got out the car and checked his watch. There was still one hour and forty minutes before he could truthfully seek sanctuary in the dark.
"Fuck!" He muttered.
"Language, William. Please do introduce me to your friends." Hera stood slightly in front of the day walking vampire, physically between him and Buffy.
"You already know Oz, the only other friend I see around here, apart from yourself of course, is Dawn there. Dark haired little chit behind little miss torturers'R'us there." He pointed to Dawn and her sister briefly. "Can we go home now?" He pleaded with his eyes for her to let him hide. He wanted to hide. He needed to hide.
"No, we can't. We're here to do a job, so get on with it. If you have to face the people that hurt you, so be it Spike. Suck it up and deal. As you yourself are so fond of saying." Hera did take one more step closer to the Slayer and was totally ignored by the young fighter.
Buffy ran full tilt towards the vampire she had seen suicide on that tape. The very vampire that filled all her dreams. That had died loving her. That had died thinking she had demanded Angel treat him as he had...
Reality sunk into her conscious mind as she closed her arms around his neck and was pushed forcibly away from him.
"Get off me!" Spike snarled, fully game-faced once more. "Don't touch me!" Only Oz's reflexes saved her from the suddenly ready shotgun.
"Spike!" He admonished his friend, taking the loaded firearm from his friend's trembling grasp. "Back off, Buffy." He looked from his friend, to his former lover's friend. Stating which camp he was in firmly and clearly. He would get between the Slayer and the vampire if need be, and stay there, but only for Spike's sake.
"Spike?" Buffy's voice held a timorous quality that no one had ever heard from her before. "Please, Spike, I didn't ask Angel to do... that! I didn't. I wouldn't. Ever!" If it were possible to say the totally wrong thing, to the wrong man, and at entirely the wrong time, Buffy managed it.
"I remember everything, every little thing as if it happened only yesterday! Funny, Angel never once said it was all his own idea. Buffy wants me to do this, Buffy doesn't want you touching her, I don't want you touching her.. I remember every single blow as he smashed my bones, as he ripped my skin, as he slammed my neck in Hera's collar, and I remember every second of him raping me... and fuck if he didn't once say it was all his own idea. Any of it! Fuck off, Slayer. Just fuck right off and leave me alone. You got what you want, now give me what I want!" He didn't even bother to continue looking at her once his tirade stopped. He just marched off towards the door of the abandoned diner and forced his way in.
"Oz? How, why?" Buffy's voice was almost lost in the whispering flutter of Alicia's heart speeding up in response to Spike's heightened, adrenaline rush confused state. He stood in the darkness within and listened to his daughter and the conversation, such as it was, outside.
"If he wants you to know, he'll tell you himself." And he heard the tell tale sound of Oz walking towards his dark hidey hole.
"Not the cool, calm, day walker vampire out there, was I?" He tried for humour and almost got hysteria.
"Not really, but I guess you had cause." Oz walked up to him and touched his shoulder in a calming gesture. "You know we've got to help them. Remember, this is for Dawn, not anyone else, okay?"
"Dawn! Shit!" Spike turned troubled eyes back towards the group still outside the diner. "She was there, you know? Saw everything. I had to scream louder and louder to cover her crying. Poor love." Spike headed for the door again, his behaviour being driven by his random mood swings. He was now into 'need to protect' mode, and Oz hoped that Xander would keep his idiotic trap shut, just this once. Or he'd shut it for him.
Buffy smiled as she saw a concerned Spike heading back towards the group. She stepped towards him again and tried to reach out to him as he passed her by, ignoring her. She was left feeling lost and bewildered as the vampire enfolded her sister in his arms.
"Dawn? Pum'kin?" Spike looked at the young teen that he had tried so hard to protect. "You ok?"
Dawn looked at Spike, large as unlife, standing in the broad daylight, worrying about whether or not she was troubled. Still hurting at Buffy's actions, the ones she had never called for. He was looking at her, love or at the very least tenderness shining forth, just for her. Wasn't this what she'd always wanted, dreamed of? That Spike would look at her with love and at Buffy with hatred and disdain. Why then did it feel wrong? Why did she feel compelled to act for Buffy's defence? To give up Spike's attention just to soothe her sister's raw nerves?
Because she was her sister. Buffy didn't even suspect that she knew about the nightmares, or that they all commented on her continued wearing of Spike's duster for protection and comfort.
"I'm fine Spike!" She smiled as she walked into the welcoming embrace of the vampire she had had a crush on for so very long. "I'm so glad you're ok. You are okay aren't you? You are real?" Her voice quaked a little on real, she obviously wasn't as together as she had thought she was.
"I'm real, but as for okay... that'll take quite some time yet." He gave her a sad smile. He looked almost maudlin, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"A baby!" Tara squealed, she was finally calmed enough from the flight and fight to focus her scattered wits enough to really look at their rescuers. She stood there, pointing at Spike, beaming all over the place. "Spike's having a baby!" She looked at Willow, hoping the red head could see what she could see. The baby growing in Spike's belly. "He's got Angel's baby in his belly!" She looked at Buffy, hoping she would believe her too. "She's in his belly, can't you see her?"
"The question is, why can you see her?" Hera moved to stand beside the rather disturbed young woman who was upsetting her William so much.
"Spike?" Surprisingly it was Anya that spoke first. She crossed to Spike's side as he held on to Dawn, even though his arms were now numb and powerless as shock rocked him. He hadn't wanted them to know, he didn't want their false sympathy, and most importantly, he didn't want Xander Harris' inevitable sarcastic comments. "Is what she said true?" He spun towards the former demon at her sudden question.
Spike nodded, ashamed for his daughter, that these mortals would know the ignominy of her conception.
"Do you want vengeance? I think I can swing things with the other Vengeance Demons to get them to do something nasty to Angel? Make his cock fall off, or have his balls strangle him in his sleep. Oh, wait, that wouldn't work with him being a vampire..."
"Oh, Gods, Hera's collar, you even said as much. And I didn't think, you're still wearing it. So, you're still.. erm... you know?" Giles blushed as he finally got over his combination of shocks and approached the young vampire. "The bastard, I'll kill him." And the truth was clearly heard in his quiet voice.
Without thinking he took Spike in his own arms, he gently released the blond vampire's frozen arms from around Dawn's body and pulled him into the protection of his body's warmth.
"I suggest we get under cover, in case our missing friends turn up?" Xander's soldier mind clicked into action. A quick look at Oz's face had told him, quite clearly, that one smile, one laugh would sign his death warrant, at the werewolf's hands. Not that he wanted to laugh, well, not all that much!
"Don't! Say nothing. Do nothing. Think nothing." Oz snarled into his ear as he walked past him towards the diner.
"Two outta three wise monkeys ain't bad." Xander muttered as he brought up the rear with Buffy.
"Giles won't kill Angel." She happily informed her friend. She never once took her eyes from Spike's retreating form. It was as if she was trying to see the baby, like Tara had, through will power alone.
Xander looked at her, and didn't like what he saw, or rather, what he didn't see. Buffy was slipping away from them. It had started weeks back, after Joyce's sudden death and continued after Spike's rape and suicide... That memory took away any desire he had to laugh at the blond vampire's predicament, and served to remind him that but for the grace of God went he himself. He'd pissed off Angel far more than Spike had during the time he'd known them both. If it had been him, rather than Spike, he knew he wouldn't be coping anywhere near as well as he was. As Buffy oh so clearly just wasn't.
"Why won't Giles kill Angel, Bufster?" He asked his question in a quiet, soothing voice. Hoping against hope she would make a rational argument for Giles' rational mind cutting in before he could try and kill Angel.
"Because I will. He doesn't get to hurt my boy friends like that. I told him once before, he wasn't to come to my patch and beat up on my boy friends."
"Spike isn't your boy friend, remember? That was why you wanted someone to talk to him about him loving you?" He kept his voice as calm as he could, almost cheerful, hoping his words would trigger reality in his friend's world view.
"He loves me, I love him. We're going to be together! Mark my words Xander, he's mine." She pointed towards the vampire still being held by her watcher. "Giles will look after him for me, until he lets me look after him."
"And the baby?" Xander dreaded to think what her solution would be to that problem.
"If he wants it, I'll want it too. If he doesn't, then I won't either." She smiled at him and then at Spike. "He's my man, it's his baby, his body... and what a body!" She pulled Spike's old battered duster even closer around her body and grinned at her Spike nestled in her watcher's arms. "I'm going to talk to him." She moved only one step forwards before she was stopped by Willow. "Hey, Willow. Spike's alive... undead, what ever.. and he's carrying a baby too. Do you think he'll want to keep it? Did you know I love him?"
"I don't think telling him that right now would be such a great idea, Buffy. He's rather fragile. Give him time, and space. Yeah, lots and lots of space!" She looked to Xander for back up. The habit of a lifetime cut in flawlessly and Xander played his part to perfection as he automatically picked up on his cue.
"Yeah, he's been really badly hurt after all, he needs plenty of space to recover from it." Xander kept his face straight, through years of practice in the gentle art of lying through one's teeth to one's parents. He knew right away that he had convinced the less than thinking straight Slayer of the validity of his reasoning. All Xander could then do was hope she would act on his suggestion.
"Space?" Buffy questioned her best friends, ever. They nodded in unison. "I can do space. Can I still do friendly while doing the space though, can't I?"
"Gentle friendly. He needs very gentle friendly. And space. Big gentle friendly space." Willow prayed that she were right. What she didn't expect was a direct and immediate response to her prayer.
"Quite right my dear. Gentle friendship. Now, what exactly is wrong with your young friend?" Hera was by their side, not one of them had seen or heard her approach. She wasn't looking at Buffy, but at Tara as the damaged young woman tried to touch Spike's belly. The vampire and the Watcher seemed locked in some bizarre dance as they tried to evade the determined young woman's hands.
"Who are you? What's your involvement with my Spike?" Buffy quizzed the older woman, she didn't think she was a rival, but didn't know off hand just what she was.
Her propriatorial staement about him being 'her Spike' did not go unnoticed. Hera chose not to question her at that moment, preferring redirection to direct intervention where ever possible.
"I'm Hera." The Goddess so enjoyed the stunned looks on the mortal children's faces, it was a moment she would long look back on fondly, and smile quite evilly at. "The boys didn't introduce me, did they? Boys! Manners of toads, all of them." She smiled graciously at the group of young mortals. "And, yes it's my collar Spike's currently wearing." She saw recognition of the name finally blossom into a response, of sorts, on Willow's face. "Yes, my dear, that Hera. Now, about your young overly perceptive friend over there, what happened to her?" She redirected once more, by pointing at Tara directly this time. It seemed, to her at any rate, that these youngsters seemed to totally miss subtlety.
"Glory attacked her, hurt her, scrambled her mind." Willow trusted this woman, this Goddess, trusted that she spoke the truth in who she was. Trusted her too that she would help Tara, if she could.
"What's your involvement with my Spike?" Buffy asked again. Her fragile mind teetering even more on the edge of the Titan's Abyss. Hera finally realised that the young woman had snapped, that her world had indeed crashed around her once too often. Her mothering instinct took over, this child needed immediate help, the other one was at least functional, after a fashion.
That, and if Spike were anyone's he would be hers, as Echidna, Mother of all Monsters was her grandmother's sister/daughter or some such. Either way her Spike had not and never would belong in any way, size or form to such an insipid creature as Buffy, the vampire slayer. Tartarus, but surely her job should preclude her forming intimate relations with vampires in the first place! Hera considered her options, brute force or ignorance. If she left Buffy in ignorance she could see Spike ripping her head clean off her shoulders, and suffering the resultant guilt somewhat loudly and publicly for a very long time to come. That left the brute force option. She was going to enjoy that one, immensely.
"Child, he is not your Spike. Not now, not ever. You have no claim on his love what so ever. He knows you have never loved him. That is the truth. That is what he, and everyone else knows. You should know it too!" Hera touched the young woman's brow with a gentle hand. As she did so the fog cleared and reality bloomed once more, in sharp harsh focus. The pain of the truth was sharp, but it was indeed the truth, reality. However unpleasant that was.
And the companion to truth was guilt, just as the companion to guilt was pain. The Slayer knew full well the pain and horror she had released on Spike, however unwittingly she had done so. The fact remained that it was she who had called Angel, who had been Angelus, who had in turn hurt Spike.
"I hurt him, didn't I? It really is all my fault, that Angelus did all that, isn't it?" Buffy looked at the back of the blond vampire who was once more talking with Dawn, having finally evaded Tara. He was still close to Giles however, she could see her watcher 's own need to protect him like he never had before. What had once been scorn and derision was now concern and fatherly warmth. And judging by Spike's lack of haste in leaving his side, he too needed what Giles was so eager to offer.
"Yours and Angel's. Oh you have your share of the blame, that much is so very true, my dear. But he, Angel, has an even greater share of the blame. There's plenty enough of it to go around. Never fear on that score." Hera smiled rather sadly at the young Slayer. "Even if you do fancy yourself currently in love with him, he no longer loves you. He can't allow you, or anyone else for that matter, that power over him ever again. And yes, a great deal of that is that he blames you for Angelus' attack, and no doubt always will. He loved you and you repaid it with absolute pure hate. And again yes, I know exactly what he did to you, including how much he has never actually harmed you, not since falling in love with you at least. So, he's got skewed values and notions about love. He tried his very best, you know. To love you properly. Only, the rules of the game he learned are for a different game entirely. A game of love Angelus taught him, oddly enough. He learned them the night he died and has stuck rigidly to them ever since. He is a vampire after all. They're created stubborn. Although I dare say you would have to give the lad points for trying. Until you and Angelus, he always believed in the power and value of love." So saying, Hera moved back to Spike's side and left the Slayer to wallow in her own guilt, confident she wouldn't drown in it this time. She now had to think of what was best for the blonde haired witch. No matter what way she looked at it, life around these mortals and half demons was never dull. Especially where Glory was concerned.
She fully intended to make Glory pay for messing around in her world, with her mortals, her demon children.
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