"It alters things somewhat. Instead of one of the Muses going with you as your liaison, I'll be going. Pregnancy is my.. oh, what's the current term... bag, it's my bag. So the team will be a werewolf, a vampire and a senior Goddess. Think you can cope with us? You will have to go through the full term of the pregnancy anyway. Might as well do it with me around." Hera rested a hand over Spike's still flat stomach.
"Yeah, you said, you can't terminate, but afterwards, who'll take it? I don't want it, I never wanted it. Never wanted to be a dad, let alone a fuckin' mum!" The omnipresent rage and fear returned to the blond's face once more.
"Wait and see, you don't know how you'll feel when the baby comes." Hera tried to get away with platitudes. She knew so much about what possible futures lay ahead for the child, depending on whether it was to be a boy or a girl. And even the Gods wouldn't know that until the eighth week of gestation.
"Don't I?" Spike snarled at her, fear, hate, loathing for Angel and Buffy and their precious powers that be filling him with rage once more.
"So, putting Angel's involvement aside for now, what did the baby do to you? What evil did it do?" Oz sat on the side of Spike's bed and looked at him, holding the vampire's gaze almost effortlessly.
"Well, nothin' so far." Spike reluctantly replied.
"Then let's take it one day at a time. You, me, Hera and the nameless one. Is the baby really responsible for Angel's guilt? Did he or she demand their creation? Is it even any of Angel's concern? Do you have to acknowledge it has anything to do with the bastard anyway? Can't it belong to just you instead?" Oz was certainly not his usual quiet self. When he had something to say, he said it.
"Will it be mortal or a vampire?" Spike asked Hera directly.
"Why does it matter to you?" She countered.
"Because I've seen child vampires, they're never very sane, even by vampire standards. I need to know if I'm going to have to carry this thing for nine fuckin' months only to have t'stake it the minute it pops out. However it's gonna pop out!" The images in his head left him unsure whether to laugh or throw up again. He settled on shuddering slightly as a compromise.
"I don't know for certain, there are many possible futures for your child. None of them fixed. I won't know for several weeks what to expect from your child. By the time I have a fix on it's gender I'll know it's true nature, vampire or mortal too." Hera broke the news honestly, she couldn't lie to the traumatised vampire. He had had too many false promises of hope broken already. Too many promises of eternal joy turn quite literally to ashes in his hands.
"Oh fuck!" Spike let his head fall back and closed his eyes. Fighting fatigue, fear and all his other far too near the surface emotions. Unsure himself if he wanted a living mortal child or an excuse to kill a twisted, insane vampiric child.
Taking advantage of his position, Hera pushed him once more into a deep sleep.
"Let's leave him in the capable arms of Morpheus and go get something to eat for ourselves. Vampires are hardy creatures, nature demands that - given the hardships of their existence. Leave him with Morph." Hera indicated the door out from Spike's bed chamber and they both left the vampire to sleep.
Guarded over by Morpheus himself.
***
It had been twenty four hours since his world had turned upside down and inside out yet again. Angel had become Angelus who had in turn became this half and half nameless, childeless wonder. He had his soul and he had his demon's rage, and both wanted revenge. Both wanted to make the pain go away, the pain of knowing that he had destroyed his childe. For the remainder of his existence he vowed that he would never make another childe, Spike had been his last. And no one could take his place.
Not in his life and most definitely not in Hell. A Hell Angel was all too familiar with. It tore at both the demon and the soul to know that they had driven his childe to welcome those eternal torments as opposed to the torments he had promised him.
Dru no longer counted as his childe. Her share of the guilt prohibited it. She was as responsible as he for Spike's death. She had willingly sided with Wolfram and Hart, just like Darla had. He had offered to give his former sire his help, what she wanted was to take his soul. In the end, all she had taken was his childe. And with him went her last chance to avoid Hell once more.
So now it was time to extend her invitation back to that same Hell Spike had gone to, time to help her park and let her start her return journey. Payment for their sins was now due - and he was going to collect.
Angel looked up at the light that spilled out from Lindsey McDonald's apartment. Once, he had looked upon such light as a little morsel day in the eternal night, as a warm haven. But those fool enough to challenge him, and think that that domestic little light would shield them, were sorely wrong. It was time the stupid lawyer learned his final lesson. Never live with a vampire, especially if you want protection from another vampire. Your home, the vampire's lair, his hunting ground. It was so obvious that Lindsey felt himself so safe from any and all vampires, his lights and life spewed forth from an open window. Unfettered, unbarred, unbelievable.
"Say bye-bye Lindsey old man." He whispered to the darkness inside and out, where his soul used to burn brightly. Now it was in permanent shadow. He looked up at that open invitation, if you could get to it and grinned in anticipation. Then he jumped. It was almost too high, but his rage leant him strength. And he made contact and entry with that too happy light.
"Angel!" The little lawyer panicked as the vampire descended from the window ledge, entering his mortal home. "How?" He looked around, trying to recall where Darla was, trying to get Angel with his back to the vampiress.
"You fuck a vampire, she hides out here, consequently she fucked your protection. Her lair, dear boy, your grave yard." The Irish lilt tinged his voice, with the souls grace and approval the demon showed forth in all it's malevolent glory.
"Angelus?" A hesitant smile dared to cross the lawyer's face, a hope sprung into sharp focus in that squalid little soul. He thought he had won. That the game was over and he the eternal victor.
Angelus lifted a gentle hand to smooth the dark haired mortal's cheek. As his other hand echoed the action and warm smile broke onto Lindsey's ugly features.
"Angelus!" He whispered the name like an acolyte's fevered prayer.
"Well, you know how it is?" Angelus smiled at the lawyer, savouring the moment. "You gotta be careful what ya' wish for, me lad, ya' jus' might get it!" Smile dissolving into rage he tightened his hold on the lawyer's head and twisted and pulled with his full vampiric strength and ripped the offending head clean of its cringing back. The decapitated body fell backwards with the heads last command to jerk away still locking its reaction. The thud drew the attention of the second player in the nights little drama. Dara ran into the room, skidding to a halt when she saw Angel's back to her.
"Lindsey? Angel?" Darla's startled voice gave the vampire the exact location for his former sire's position.
"Present for ya' Darla!" He spun, threw the head at her and as she instinctively caught it, the spring loaded stake hidden up his sleeve descended and he thrust it right into her heart one more time. For the last time. This time she would stay dead, he swore it!
Lindsey McDonald's head with its still startled expression fell onto the grey, cold unwelcoming pile of dry ash that had been the greatest love affair of his entire life. Angel didn't even spare him a moment's pity that the demon he loved so much could never love him. After all, she had never known how to love. Not like his Spike had. Spike had loved and they had made him take it all away.
One down, about a hundred more to go!
***
In Sunnydale, in a busy corner of the graveyard Spike had called home, a practised hand put a new weapon into use. A quiet pump, pump hiss and Spike's water pistol discharged a measured dose of holy water right into a vampire's face. Followed by a stake to the heart and it crumbled to dust. Its pain wracked scream silenced for ever.
"Woah, this is almost fun." Xander's voice tried its very best to sound cheerful, and almost made it. "Makes slayage faster, safer, more accurate. The hissing, dissolving ones stand out clearly marked, ready to be staked." He looked over at the slayer as she staked his next victim. He wished he could find the right words to ease Buffy's guilt, even a little.
Buffy's arm shot out, following each jet of water to its disabled target. She knew just what Xander was doing, even appreciated his attempts at bridging the gap Spike's death had opened up between them all. But the wounds she carried were far too raw to want anyone treating them.
"And Spike devised this? The most important weapon to be added to the slayer's armoury in God knows how long and it came from a vampire?" He wasn't rude, he wasn't disrespectful, just amazed. "Wonder what else he would have thought up to help you, if we hadn't fucked things up so badly?"
"There's no we, Xander, just me. I fucked things up, I got him killed. I couldn't tell Angel from Angelus. I didn't want him dead, just to stop chaining me up and demanding I said I loved him, felt anything for him." Buffy staked the last vampire and turned to face the still tense Xander. Showing him just where the hurts lay, not that he really needed her telegraphing her pain. Finally, she realised that Xander, and all of them, felt as guilty as she did over Spike's death. It had been Xander that had offered to patrol with her. She hadn't wanted to ask, hadn't wanted to patrol alone, especially this close to Spike's crypt. "Thanks for coming on patrol with me, after last night and all."
"Didn't you feel anything at all for Spike? He loved you. It's bizarre but true. He went against his own vampire nature so much, just for you. And you never noticed, felt anything?" Xander blurted out the questions burning in his head as he relaxed his trigger finger and raised the muzzle of his brightly coloured weapon to the sky.
"Fear." Buffy looked at her friend and smiled a little shakily at him. "I felt fear for Spike, of Spike. I couldn't figure him out. He was so human, too human. Not what an evil vampire should be. He didn't follow the script and I feared him because of it. Just as he died because of it too. I didn't understand till way too late. He wasn't like Angel, he was always so comfortable with who and what he was. It was more than I've ever managed to be, being the Slayer has interfered with every relationship I ever had, or wanted, or didn't want."
"At least you felt something." He looked at the lights from the rest of the town, wondered how many vampires, demons and other beasts of the night were out there. Wondered if there was any other vampire like Spike, waiting for them. And he shuddered. "I guess we all felt fear. None of us understood him and we were all too afraid to try and understand him. Like you said, too human, knowing Spike was like looking into a perfect mirror in the night. All he reflected was human nature, and we're none of us angels." He turned back to her at her sharp intake of breath. "Sorry, bad analogy."
"'S ok, really. And you're right. About everything." She smiled at her companion and finally found a real laugh, a gentle laugh, in her heart. "When did you become so wise then, oh profound one?"
"Erm, would you believe while living with Spike under my roof?"
"Actually, I would." Buffy looked at the now dark and empty again crypt that had been Spike's home. So often her first port of call when she needed help, and even if he did sometimes make her pay for his help, he always gave it. "You know, I think I'm going to miss him even more than I ever missed Angel. Angel gave up nothing for me, Spike gave up everything and I never noticed until it was far too late."
"Come on, let's call it quits for tonight and go home, you can fret over Dawn, I'll comfort Anya, we'll all say sorry and cry some more and tell do you remember when stories and try to smile."
"Sounds like a plan." A shaky smile was his reward and they headed back to Buffy's home, silent, remembering and wondering what might have been.
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