Chapter 4: Regrets

He knew she was following him. He could hear the sound of her sneakers, pounding into the snow as she ran, and like a distant echo, he heard the pounding of her heart, beating out its own rhythm as it drove her on her desperate path toward him.

Against his will, Spike’s brisk pace slowed to a walk, allowing her to close the distance between them, until finally he stopped, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the metal spires of the cemetery gates they’d only just left behind.

He stopped, and he let himself be found.

“Spike,” she said, panting and out of breath. “Why did you…? You just left.”

He turned slowly to face her, but kept his eyes from meeting hers. “Just didn’t think this was a good idea.”

“But you came all this way…”

“Don’t know where I came from, do you, Slayer?” he snapped, more harshly than necessary.

Buffy’s jaw clenched. “No. I don’t. Because you never cared enough to tell me.”

Her tone was ragged, and he could smell the salt of her unshed tears. He stared, absorbing the blow, knowing he deserved it, before silently turning to go.

“Please,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “You came here for a reason.”

“Doesn’t matter now.” Spike shrugged, leaning back against the gate, one leg bent at the knee with his foot propped against the wrought iron. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, looked at them, then at her, and reconsidered, stuffing them angrily back into his coat.

“It was Joy, wasn’t it?” Buffy said quietly. “You saw I had a kid, and you freaked.”

“Don’t wanna get in the middle of anything,” he muttered.

“You’re not.”

“You have a family now,” Spike said, shoving away from the gate and turning to leave again. “I… didn’t realize.” She started to say something but he cut her off, throwing the words over his shoulder as he took the first steps away from her. “Don’t wanna intrude.”

Her voice followed him, pointed and deliberate. “I have a daughter.”

He stopped, gazing back at her with a faint look of suspicion.

“I haven’t… I mean, there was a… donor.”

Spike studied her face, still unsure whether to be relieved. “I saw the wedding picture…” he said doubtfully.

Buffy’s eyes widened with understanding. “That was Dawn!” she told him, relieved laughter bubbling up. “She got married last year. To – to a Watcher. They train Slayers in New York now.”

Spike ducked his head, embarrassed now at his mistake, feeling like a fool for running from her without waiting for an explanation.

“Will you… come back?” she asked hesitantly, her fears of rejection returning to her tenfold. He lifted his gaze and met her eyes, unable to hide the regret in his own.

“God, you’re shivering,” he said suddenly, shrugging out of his duster and wrapping it around her. It was only then that Buffy realized she’d run out of the house without a coat. In her panic, she hadn’t even felt the cold.

She reached out with one hand and gently touched his bare arm. “Please come back. I’d like you to meet my daughter.”

He nodded silently and allowed her to lead him back up the hill to her apartment. When he entered the living room for the second time, Spike could see that the blushing bride in the picture had a darker shade of hair than her sister, and the glowing smile was most certainly that of the Niblet.

Spike kicked himself for letting his emotions get the better of him – he’d just seen the couple and the white dress and jumped to conclusions. Next to the wedding photo was a smaller frame with a picture of Buffy wearing a red bandana tied around her head and cuddling a younger Joy, both of them smiling and laughing. The pictures he’d assumed were of the happy family were mostly just of Buffy and Joy; Dawn was in a few, as was Xander, with a woman he didn’t recognize. No husband/boyfriend/father figure to be found.

He was such an ass. Take a closer look before you run out next time, you poncy bugger, he berated himself.

“How old is she?” he asked, fingering one of Joy’s baby pictures.

“She’ll be five this March.”

“Beautiful,” Spike told her. “Like her mum.”

Buffy blushed, and she was glad that he was intently studying the pictures rather than looking at her. “Thank you.”

When he didn’t show any signs of explaining why he was there, she prompted him, “So, what did you want to –”

“Niblet married a Watcher, eh?” he interrupted her, as though he were trying to avoid the conversation he’d come here to have. “Can’t say as that’s a surprise. Only, God…” He squinted at the blond groom in the photo. “Please tell me it wasn’t Andrew.”

Buffy let out a sharp laugh, not quite able to let go of her tension. “No, no. His name is Philip. His father was killed in the First’s attack. A few more years and Philip would’ve been joining the Council, too. Giles convinced him to stick with us. But… he’s nice. Not as tweedy as you’d expect.” They shared a smile, but Spike’s soon faltered.

“Was a crap thing to do to her,” he said, his eyes focusing on the smiling face in the wedding portrait. “Not tellin’ her I was around. Bet she was right pissed, wasn’t she?”

“She was pissed about a lot of things back then.”

“Oh,” Spike replied. Then, with dawning understanding, he repeated, “Oh.” His gaze dropped to his shoes. “Still held a grudge, then, did she?”

Forgiveness was an elusive thing – Buffy knew that well – but Spike had always seemed like such a constant, was always there, and in those final days in Sunnydale, she knew Dawn thought she had all the time in the world to come to terms with what she saw as his betrayal.

Spike’s death had taken Dawn by complete surprise, and she hadn’t been prepared for the regret at the things left unsaid, the fences left unmended. But she had also been proud of him, in a way she hadn’t been for a long time.

And she’d wanted to be proud of him again, when she had heard that he sacrificed his life in a second apocalypse. But the intervening year weighed on her conscience – a condition with which Buffy was intimately familiar. Dawn’s emotions were like a slightly muted imitation of her own, questioning why he hadn’t called, wondering if her own actions had made him feel unwanted, and thinking of all the things she wished she’d told him before that final battle.

But, just like Buffy, Dawn choked on the words when Spike again was counted among the living. Buffy knew she thought of him occasionally. Once, she’d mentioned that she was considering asking Willow to locate him. Buffy hadn’t discouraged her – after all, Dawn and Spike had had a relationship that had nothing to do with her – but Dawn knew that contacting Spike, and finding out he didn’t want to see them, would undoubtedly hurt Buffy more than it would hurt her. Buffy had suffered enough heartbreak already, and besides, he didn’t seem to want to be found. So, Dawn changed her mind and let him be.

In the end, sister solidarity always won out.

“She was upset, mostly,” Buffy told him, remembering the long, hard conversations she’d had with Dawn that first year. “She was hard on you when you first came back, with the soul. She – she felt like she never got a chance to tell you it was okay.”

Spike let out a long, slow breath. “Deserved everything I got from her. Guess I’ll be asking her forgiveness for this, too, now. Shouldn’t’ve kept it from her, even if I didn’t want…”

He stopped himself in time, but Buffy could finish his sentence in her head. Even if I didn’t want you to know. The knot in her chest tightened painfully, at the reminder of how seemingly little he cared for her now, and at the knowledge that it was her fault, that she had been the reason Spike never contacted Dawn.

“Right,” she said, fighting down her emotions with every ounce of control she had. “She’s pregnant, you know,” Buffy blurted out, in a much brighter changing-the-subject tone of voice. “Dawn. The baby’s due in July, but they haven’t announced yet, so you’ll have to act surprised when she tells you.”

“Good for them.” Spike nodded, hesitating before speaking again, and Buffy knew what his next question would be.

“And what’s the story with your little one?”

“I just… wanted a child,” she explained, suddenly feeling more vulnerable than she had throughout the entire awkward conversation. “But I could never seem to, you know, find the guy. I couldn’t get close – not after…” She trailed off, begging him with her eyes to understand her incoherent ramblings, to realize that no one else could ever hold her heart.

He nodded again, seemingly unaffected, and turned back to the mantle.

She didn’t tell Spike that she had pored over descriptions and pictures of donors, looking for just the right match. Pale blond, blue eyes, muscular but compact, cheekbones that could cut glass. It was just one more part of her self-preservation, her game of pretend, that it was his child, that somehow, miraculously, before he died, he’d been able to give her that one last gift. It didn’t matter that the timing wasn’t right. She had no reminders of him – no pictures, no keepsakes, no mementos. Anything she might have kept had been lost when Sunnydale collapsed.

So, she made her own.

“So, where is the bit?” he asked finally.

Buffy furrowed her brow before realizing he meant Joy this time, not Dawn. “Oh – you mean…? She’s with Xander. He baby-sits a lot.”

“Harris is still around, eh?”

“He lives down the street,” she told him. “Lives with a Slayer, actually. Like we didn’t all know that would happen eventually.”

Spike shared her smile. “Boy’s got almost as much of a Slayer obsession as…” He stopped himself, clearing his throat. “Well, anyway.” He raised an eyebrow as something she’d said caught his attention. “‘Lives with?’”

“They’re… together. But he doesn’t want to get married.”

“Ah.” The corners of Spike’s mouth turned up, almost letting the smile return. “Well, some things never change, I guess.”

“No,” she said meaningfully. “They don’t.”

If he wouldn’t start the conversation, she decided, she would do it for him. She was tired of this hollow banter, the feigned interest. Her lover was here, standing in front of her for the first time in ten years. She didn’t want to talk about Xander.

Spike tilted his head to the side, giving her an inscrutable expression. “Buffy…”

“I meant what I said,” she blurted out. She didn’t elaborate.

She didn’t need to.