The next two chapters will be interesting. They consist of summaries and snippets during an entire month that leads to the present.

Chapter Ten

31 days ago

They didn’t talk. Spike huddled in the corner. He tried not to look anywhere that consisted of slayer. She lay curled in the bed with the covers up to her chin. She remained still, lost in the replay of past events.

She felt like each moment with Spike, her true vampire, was slipping away. She grappled them back, reliving the events in vivid color, so raw, bittersweet. She was too inwardly riveted to even outwardly cry. But she felt it inside with welcoming. She’d carry him until the end because the pain was worth it. He was worth it.

30 days ago

Spike became twitchy. He finally stood up and began to pace in front of the door. He tried to keep his mind vacant. If he didn’t think he wouldn’t have to accept the reality of being in the position of a caged animal.

The silence was getting to Buffy. She laid her head against the brass headboard of the bed. She decided to pretend it didn’t matter that he was there.

“Hush-a-bye don't you cry,” Buffy began to sing. “Go to sleep, my little baby.” She rubbed the small bulge of her stomach. It seemed to be getting more noticeable everyday, at least in the shower without the overflowing green dress. And as it grew, so did her love for her daughter, accompanied with a need to escape her prison.

”When you wake you shall have - All the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapple grays.” Her voice wavered, a little off-key. “Coach and six white horses. Hush-a-bye don't you cry. Go to sleep-y, little baby.”
She thought she felt Spike’s gaze but when she turned he was focused on something interesting on the floor.

29 days ago

Buffy admitted to her childishness and decided to instigate Spike-acknowledgement. She shouldn’t be mad at him. All he did was get her to face the truth. Maybe he wasn’t her Spike, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get to know him. Just as long as he didn’t take her Spike’s place.

“You know, this is stupid,” she declared. “Us playing the ignoring game. I guess I loose. I’d give you a gold star, but I’m all out.”

She was rewarded with nothing.

“You have more self control than my Spike. He would have snapped by now. Maybe he wouldn’t have talked directly to me, but he would have talked just to hear his own voice.” She laughed, while trying not to open up the wound she wasn’t sure would ever fully heal.

Still he said nothing. She sighed. She rested her palm over her unborn child.

“Guess I’ll talk to you then. You’d talk to Mommy if you could, wouldn’t you, baby?”

28 days ago

“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I heard a maid sing in the valley below. Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me. How could you use, a poor maiden so?"

” Remember the vows you made to me truly. Remember how tenderly you nestled close to me. Gay is the garland, fresh are the roses I’ve culled from the garden to bind over thee. Here I wonder alone as I wonder.”

“You skipped a whole verse,” Spike said.

Buffy snapped her head to the side. Her mouth hung open.

“So hell finally froze, I see,” she quipped.

He glowered and looked away.

”Through yonder grove, by the spring that is running. There you and I have so merrily played. Kissing and courting and gently . . . and gently. Hmm. . .” She hummed the forgotten part.

”Gently sporting,” Spike corrected.

“Gently sporting. Oh, my innocent heart you've betrayed,” Buffy sang on. “How could you fright a pretty girl who loves you so dearly and warm? Though love's lolly is surely but a fancy. Still it should prove to me sweeter than your thorn.”

Spike stood up. “That’s slight, not fright. And folly, not lolly! And scorn, not . . . Hey, you’re messing up on purpose to get me going. Well, it isn’t going to work!”

She shrugged. “Actually I’m not. I can never get stuff right. Ask Giles. It’s a thing. Besides, it isn’t like it has catchy lyrics.”

He didn’t respond.
"Oh don't deceive me. Oh never leave me. How could you use, a poor maiden so?" Buffy ended softly.

27 days ago

As soon as Spike awoke he started to do push-ups. He was going on one-hundred when Buffy decided to get off her lazy butt and do something as well. She hesitated, unsure. What exercises were okay to do while pregnant, and what weren’t?

She suddenly had a piercing sense of fright. She really wanted her mom, or at least one of those mother-to-be magazines that clearly laid out what to do and what not to do. She was pretty much alone here.

She ended up going for the safe thing and just gently jogged around the room in circles. There wasn’t a lot of space and she found herself getting dizzy. She stopped and proceeded to do arm stretches instead.


26 days ago

“I spy with my little eye something white,” Buffy said.

“Is it the wall?” Spike asked, already knowing the answer.

“Wow, how’d you guess? Your turn.”

“I see something silver,” he said.

“Oh, could it be the video camera?”

“Ding ding,” Spike said.

She pouted. “This game is no fun.”

He looked over from his position beside her on the edge of the bed. He was stricken by how cute she was at that moment. He’d never seen the other Buffy this way. She’d always been on fire with slayerness. He was witnessing a girl that wasn’t consumed by darkness. An emphasis on the ‘girl’.

“Have to agree. Not much to pick from,” Spike remarked.

Her head rose. “How much do you think they see?”

“Don’t rightly know. Could be every second.”

Buffy got to her feet. She stepped over before the camera and craned her neck. “You could at least give us a board game!” she shouted. She judged how high above her head it was. She tried jumping. She could almost reach. Suddenly red beams shot out and zapped her hand. She hissed, falling to a crouch.

“What in the bleeding hell are you doing?” Spike shot over to her side. He took her hand and examined it. The skin looked fine.

“I’m trying to break it, that’s what.”

“They got it rigged. Some sort of mechanical force-field.”

She shrugged. “It was worth a try.” She paused. “Ever play ‘I’m going to grandma’s house’?”

He rose an eyebrow.

“No? Well, it is a rhyming thing. I say something and then . . .”


25 days ago

It was night. Or so they deduced because periodically the lights would dim.

Buffy was going to crack. The walls were closing in on her. Her chest tightened, crushing in on her lungs. She glanced around in a panic. No window. Just white walls wherever she turned. She squirmed in the bed and kicked off the sheets.

Spike watched the discomforted Buffy with cloudy emotions. He tried to hate her, but found it surprisingly difficult. She wasn’t the one who had dusted Dru.

Suddenly, Buffy jumped out of the bed. She went over to the door and banged upon it with her fists. She howled like a wolf in agony.

There was only so much Spike could take. He was used to crazy fits, having to deal with Drusilla’s visions for over a century. He sprung into action and took hold of her shoulders from behind.

“Buffy,” he said soothingly.

She stilled. She slumped, seemingly confident that he would keep her from meeting the floor. “I can’t breathe,” she gasped. “I can’t breathe.”

“Shhh.” He turned her around to face him. “Don’t look at the room. Keep your eyes on me.”

She nodded.

Taking her hands, he guided her over to the bed. He gently helped her down on the mattress. Her eyes darted wildly around in the dark. He grabbed her head and pointed it at him again.

“No, keep your gaze on me. Let the room fade away. There’s only me.”

The panic attack continued. She gripped his hands, taking in air much too quickly.

“Come on, slayer, you can do it.” He took in a long, slow, gulp of air in exaggeration. “Watch me.” He repeated it.

Buffy’s breathing gradually came back to normal. She kept her eyes on him until they began to droop. She drifted off, her hand still in his. He frowned at their linked skin and pried what was his away. He was about to head over to his half of the room but halted in his tracks. He stretched out on the hard surface next to where Buffy snored.

24 days ago

The day began as usual. Boring. The woosh of the mechanical door opening caught them both off-guard. They stood next to each other to confront the visitor.

A vamp entered. He didn’t wear blue like the rest, but instead red. He held an intimidating gun pointed right at them.

“I’m here for the girl,” he stated.

“Like hell you are!” Spike growled.

The vamp hefted the gun higher. “Do you know what this is?”

“A GI Joe toy? But that’s just a guess,” Buffy said.

The vampire spared Buffy a blank look. “It’ll leave you paralyzed for days. So I suggest you cooperate.”

Spike was ready to rush in anyways. Buffy held him back with an arm. He struggled against the blockade but she held firm. He pondered how weak he was if her deflation seemed like super-powers to him. She shook her head.

“Don’t, Spike.”

“But, Buffy . . .”

She met his eyes. “I’ll be back,” she promised.

She left. The door shut and he came to accept that he’d miss her if she turned out to be wrong. Not that he’d choose her company if they were out of here. No. But she was all he had in here.

He passed the time by pacing.

When Buffy did return he was too relieved to ask questions. He came put an arm around her, but realized what he was doing and quickly retracted it. She didn’t seem to notice. She stood there with an eerie, dreamy grin that was too large for her face.

“I got to see her,” Buffy said.

“Got to see who?”

“The baby. It’s a girl, by the way. It is too early to tell by machines, but Willow told me before I left.” A single tear escaped her eye. He didn’t get how women could smile and yet cry at the same time.

“She’s beautiful. They didn’t let me take a picture. I wish you could have seen,” she went on.

He frowned. Riley and the group hadn’t given her an ultrasound for her own benefit. They were after something, something that had to do with the baby. He didn’t have the heart to shatter Buffy’s elation. He forced a smile and listened to her babble on about the miracle growing inside her.

23 days ago

“Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed. Her eyes got really large.

“What’s wrong?” Spike didn’t understand the concern he felt. He was getting as soft as baby food. He didn’t like it.

She snatched his hand and laid it over her rounded belly. “There.”

At first he didn’t get it. Then he felt it. Something pushed up from within. The expression he showed must have been comical because Buffy giggled. She took his hand and transferred it over to the other part of her middle.

“She’s over here now.”

It happened again. He kept his hand there, waiting to feel it once more. Nothing happened.

Buffy sighed. “I guess she wore herself out. Sleepy time.”

Spike still kept his hand there. “Something’s really alive in there.”

“Well, yeah. What’d ya think, I was just getting fat?”

“No, I just-“ Spike removed his hand. He ran it through his hair. “Never felt it is all.”

“Never?” Buffy paused. “I remember when my mom was pregnant with Dawnie. She let me feel. It’s different when you are the pregnant one. There’s a whole little person inside me.”

Buffy leaned back against the pillow. She glowed. So alive, the pinnacle of thrivation. Spike blinked and couldn’t help but think of the word effulgent. He stuffed it down as soon as it emerged.

22 days ago

“What is your favorite color?” Buffy asked.

He stuffed his hands in his jeans. “What is this? Twenty questions?”

“We played that earlier, remember? No, this is just me trying to get to know you.”

“Trying to find out how different I am from the one who left you behind? That it?”

“No.”

That was the end of that.

21 days ago

They took Buffy for tests. She left willingly. Yet again Spike was left to worry in her absence.

20 days ago

“Are you at all interested in where I came from?” Buffy asked.

“I dunno. Hadn’t thought about it,” he answered.

She sat up. “Come on, you gotta be. What do you want to know?”

He leaned his head against the wall. He had the urge for a smoke.

“I don’t want to hear about the other me,” he snapped.

“Oh-kay. I’ll tell you other stuff.” She waited for an agreement. When he didn’t give it she continued. “Willow awoke all the potentials. Now there are hundreds of bitty slayers out there. Sunnydale is a giant crater after Sp- after we defeated the First. Giles is rebuilding the council. It got blown up.” She paused. “Your turn.”

“My what?”

“Your turn. Tell me about this place. How did all this happen?”

He stalked over. He dragged her up so he could stare her down.

“You wanna know what happened, slayer!? You dusted my whole reason for being. My dark princess. I wanted to hurt you as bad as you hurt me. So I vamped your captain cardboard.”

Buffy gasped. She backed away but he caught her.

“Yeah, that’s right! Is all my fault this world went all psycho! Was his bright idea to round up the minority and put them into slavery.” He yanked her arm. “So, you still wanna know my favorite color? Wanna get to know me better?”

She ripped out of his grasp. She gave him a hard look before turning away without a word.


19 days ago

The truth yesterday distanced Buffy from him. Which was good. They were becoming too comfy with each other. He couldn’t allow himself to lose himself- to become like the vampire she must have whipped and kept on a leash in her world. He was a monster, evil, and he wasn’t going to forget it.

“I’d be curled up on the couch right now with an herbal tea,” Buffy said. “Mmm, a foot massage would be nice. Of course I don’t have a guy to do it, but since it’s my fantasy, I have one. And a chicken salad. I could do with a chicken salad with Italian dressing. What would you be doing if you weren’t locked up?”

This was his chance.

“I’d be shagging one of my seven slaves right about now.” He licked his teeth. He met Buffy’s eyes, clamped his fingers over his crotch. She cringed and he smirked. “Most likely the blond. She’s a feisty one.”

Buffy crawled onto the bed. She faced the wall.

Yeah, he was the big bad.

18 days ago

Buffy was relieved when they came to take her. She had to get away from Spike. Every comment that spilled out of his mouth was a stab to enforce his vampiric nature.

They brought her to the examining room and she willingly climbed onto the table. A new nurse was there, a female. She turned on the screen and Buffy hoped they were about to perform another ultrasound. The nurse proceeded to put liquid over her bared stomach. It wasn’t the gel she remembered them using before.

“What are you putting on me?” Buffy asked.

“Antiseptic.”

“Oh. . . Why?”

The nurse turned away, ignoring her. Buffy didn’t like the feeling she was getting. She tried to crane her neck to see what the nurse was doing. The nurse turned and Buffy flinched. She held a long, thin needle.

“Ok, no!” Buffy protested. “No needles! Needles lead to badness.”

The vampire nurse took her free hand and pressed it down to keep Buffy in place. The slayer squirmed.

“Relax or we’ll have to give you anesthetic,” the nurse said. “All I’m going to do is a cordocentesis.”

“And in English that is what?” Buffy growled.

“A fetal blood sample. It won’t take long. Just lay still.”

The needle inched toward Buffy’s belly. She froze, a tear leaking from her eye.

“Are there any risks?” Buffy whispered.

There was a pause. Too long. “None.”

“Liar,” Buffy said.

But there was nothing she could do. The nurse had the complete upper-hand. She hardly breathed as the needle slid into her uterus. She watched the ultrasound screen throughout the process, begging whoever would listen to watch over her child.



17 days ago

Buffy returned in silence. She got onto the bed and snuggled under the blankets. Spike watched her for hours. She pretended to sleep, but he could sense she wasn’t. Then she began to whimper. He ignored it at first. Why should he care?

His nostrils flared. He could smell something he couldn’t recognize. He roamed around the room, trying to decipher its origin. It led him to Buffy. She looked up at him with pained eyes.

“What did they do to you?” he asked, hovering over her.

“They took a blood sample,” she said. She clutched her stomach and moaned. “It hurts. It shouldn’t hurt. Something is wrong.”

Spike remained there while she writhed as the cramps grew greater, transfixed. She was sweaty, disoriented . . . weak. Right there for the taking. His demon roared, saying ‘let me out to play’. She tossed her head to the side, exposing her delicate white throat in temptation.

‘Go on. Put her out of her misery. Slayer’s blood. It’ll make you stronger. You’ll be able to escape.’

He dove. His fangs sunk into her pulse and he gulped the blood up like a starving man given water. It burned down his throat, warming the cold tissue. It was sweet, potent, true ambrosia from the God. And there was something else. Something familiar. He halted his swallowing and pulled away, blood dripping down his chin. His tongue slid out and he slurped it up.

The Aurelius family blood had a taste. Buffy held a tinge of that flavor. He reeled backwards. She held his flesh and blood. But what did that mean?