IN THE INTERREGNUM

Spike paced the vast emptiness. The very idea nauseated him. He looked at Joyce incredulously, “They can’t be serious! This just clinches it,” he ran his hands through his hair as he paced, “They are out of their minds!” he roared.

Joyce held her hands out, half in surrender, half in an attempt to contain the rage that didn’t belong in this place, even though she understood it completely, “Spike, please calm down. You make enough noise, you won’t stay here no matter how many angels you have in your corner,” Joyce took him firmly by the shoulders, forcing him to focus on her, “Do you really want to leave her, again?” she shook him roughly, “Do you want to go back there? You’ve been there,” she reminded him. She was certain he didn’t need reminding, but she also knew that, when it came to him, emotions could cloud everything else, “You know what Hell is, and how it feels,” she met hid glistening eyes, “and I know you don’t want to put Buffy through that.”

The mention of Buffy’s name seemed to ground him. And, he gasped in shock, “No! I don’t!” he hissed.

“…Because that’s what this would be,” Joyce could see that the steady rhythm of her voice was finally starting to calm him. All the rage left him, with one shuddering gasp, and he fell in a weeping tangle of limbs. As if he were a marionette whose strings had been cut. Joyce swept him up in her arms as if he were a small boy, “Buffy could have anything she wanted here,” she tried to comfort him, “But, she wants you. So, if you weren’t here? For her, this would be Hell.”

Spike sobbed out all the hurt he could never, would never tell Buffy about. He searched her face for some kind of understanding, “Joyce,” he choked, as another sob wracked him, “You don’t know what it was like in that place. It felt like years, Joyce. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, before I saw her again,” the rage was shining in his eyes now, even as his body’s energy was spent. He was weary of the fight, and Joyce knew this, “And now, the Gods of bloody Mount Olympus tell me,” his voice rose to an almost deafening roar as he railed against the heavens, “They have the gall to tell me that I can save Joni, and Buffy, and the whole bleeding human race,” he sagged against her more, defeated, all his strength sapped. The sound in his chest became an echo of itself. It, and he, had been stretched too thin. So thin that when he did speak the sound hurled out into the void and shattered, “But if I do, I can never have them. Now they tell me that I have to stay in that place until I’m numb, and forget them. And not because of the hundreds of people I killed to survive. I have to stay in that Hell because of what I did to save Buffy. Because of my sacrifice, because I did what Angelus wouldn’t, I’m sentenced to Hell, but he gets to have them? He gets to dance with them in the daylight? He gets to sing our daughter to sleep at night? You tell me, Joyce. Please tell me how is that fair?”

“It’s not,” Joyce agreed, “The Higher Ups brought you in to try to show him what he could have been. But, instead of following your example, he let Holland turn his head around. He really is like every little emperor there ever was, isn’t he?” Joyce mused, “But, what Holland didn’t factor in, is the mother of one Buffy Summers-Dustin,” she slowly untangled herself from him and stood, “Do you think you can stand?”

He nodded, forcing tired limbs to move.

“Good, because we have a very important meeting.”

************************
JULY 10, 2012

Buffy could tell from his demeanor that the news wasn’t good. When Spike’s face looked like that, it could mean only one thing. Buffy knew that look, because Spike had worn it for almost a year now. The weight of carrying this had placed deep-set lines on that exquisite face.

Even through the heat of fever, she could tell.

Another Slayer had fallen ill.

Spike carefully shut the bedroom door. He would face Hell again before he let Jonina hear this. As he sat down on the edge of the bed, “Looks like you’re not as unique as we thought, Love,” he tried to keep the mood light, but it was difficult, as he felt her stiffen under the bedclothes. His eyes drifted toward the closed door, “That was the Nibblet. It seems Martha Glen wasn’t as strong as you are,” his eyes went down because he didn’t want to burden her any more than he needed to. But he also found it physically impossible to lie to her, “It took her,” he sighed. Sensing her dread, with a stiff smile, he quickly added, “But with the barrels of midnight oil that Dawnie and Illyria are burning trying to suss out this thing, and with me in it with both fangs.” He kissed her forehead, and the fever seared his lips, “It won’t be long before we find it. A good bit of Winifred is strong in Illyria. So with her, it’s like having two people for the price of one. So with all of us puzzling this out, one of us will hit on the answer soon,” his face grew shadowed, “I swear,” he whispered.

Buffy slowly closed her eyes at the rush of ice that spread through her fire engulfed nerves as he kissed her temple.

He shut his eyes against the tide of her pain as it shot through him, “I know that hurt, Pet,” he straightened up slowly as the sorrow and exhaustion pulled at him, “But, I’ve almost got it. I’ll get it. I’ll find the answer,” he swore as he shut the door and let Buffy fall into the mercy of sleep. He placed his hand reverently against the door and whispered, “If it takes working myself to a pile of dust.”

On his way down to the makeshift laboratory in the building’s basement, he stopped by for his nightly dose of sunshine. Nothing was a better motivator than seeing her. He cursed to himself. He really must be exhausted, because there was no other excuse for missing her accelerated breathing and heartbeat. She was awake. She’d had a nightmare, and he wasn’t there to shove the monsters back under the bed. He sighed as he tapped the door lightly, “Hey, Sunshine, what are you doing up?” he purred as he looked in on her.

He took in the dusky mixture of pencil lead and crayon wax as it wafted through the air and over his nose and mouth. She was an artist, his girl.

He stood motionless as gentle moonlight washed over her, making her delicate features seem even more so as she hunched over her little drawing table with her hair in her eyes. He could see the tip of her tongue as it slipped out from between her lips, trying to guide her hands as they put the wispy dream images to paper before they flew from her mind.

As she turned her head, her maple hair flashed gold in the moonlight. Her eyes were narrowed in curious contemplation of him, “Daddy,” Jonina asked, “do you have another face? Are you a monster?”

At first horror, then a quiet acceptance flooded his brain. There was no fright in her voice. There was only the quiet questioning of a precocious little girl, trying to define her world.

He came the rest of the way into her room and knelt down to her eye level. He reached over to turn on the desk lamp that was supposed to illuminate her drawing space, why she always chose to draw in the dark he would never know, and asked her, “Why do you ask, Dove?”

Joni shook her head quickly. Her Daddy tried not to show her, but she saw. She did. She’d hurt him by asking that stupid question, “No reason, Daddy. It’s just that, in my dreams, sometimes…” she drifted off, avoiding his eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him anymore.

“Sometimes what, Dove?” he prompted gently.

She bit her lip as she thought, bringing a tiny pinprick of blood to the surface. Just that small amount was enough to send the demon singing through him, and he had to avert his eyes or he would lose control of himself. He closed his eyes tight and tucked his chin to his chest.

Spike was disgusted with himself. He should never have allowed himself to become this exhausted. So deprived of sleep and nourishment that even his own daughter looked like a meal to him.

He really was a monster.

“Daddy, you looked scared? Are you all right?”

The soft, tender look in her eye, nearly brought him to tears, “Daddy’s just a little sleepy, Sweetling. Just like you should be.”

“But Daddy, the boogieman…”

Spike looked closely at his child’s face. In it he didn’t see fright. Instead he saw sadness. This wasn’t like her other night terrors, “What about the boogieman, Jonina?”

“Daddy,” she whispered as her little fingers traced his face. They traveled nimbly over his eyebrows and the arch of his cheeks, then down over the bridge of his nose. It was then that Spike realized what she was asking. She had seen a part of himself that he’d tried to hide from her.

She was asking about his demon. That could only mean one thing. She was a Slayer.

He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He felt the sting and pressure behind his eyes.

“Daddy,” little fingers touched his face and her voice hitched in childlike fear. Her hero was scared and it was her fault, “Why are you crying?”

The sweetness in her face stung him, “Sweetling, tell me the truth. Did the boogieman look like me?”

She nodded slowly, “Yeah. But he didn’t have brown hair like yours. His was white.”
********************

OCTOBER 17, 2005

Spike placed her carefully back into her isolet. Bringing the little pink baby blanket up the her chin, “Rest well, little one,” he grinned at her under his mask, “I’ll take care of you,” his hand pressed against the isolet, “I promise, you won’t ever be afraid of me.”

Leaving the nursery, he shed the sterile garb that covered his street clothes and nodded to the nurses as he left.

He had promised to protect her, and he was going to do just that.
*******************

In a place as big as this Angel could get lost. And as long as he stayed in the shadows he wouldn’t be noticed, not by humans anyway.

He had counted on Spike being to preoccupied to notice his presence. He was wrong.

As Angel prepared to take the stairs down to the main parking structure, he found himself pinned to the wall with surprising speed. He blinked as amber eyes held him, “I can see that you haven’t learned your lesson,” Spike growled, “So, I’ll tell you straight, if that precious crystal in that bassinet, who for some reason, someone has seen fit to let me be a father to; if she even sneezes and I think you have something to do with it, I will kill you. I know you had something to do with monitors not functioning properly. I know who she is, and what you’re trying to do. I won’t let you near her. Do you understand me? I know how important that dove is in there,” his eyes narrowed, “And I know you do. She doesn’t need that burden. She’s had enough for three lifetimes, and she’s only three days old!”

“Spike, you don’t understand,” Angel said, “I’m trying to save you!”

“Well stop!” Spike commanded.
*********************

The phone rang in the Jennings Street dojo. Buffy checked the caller I.D., “Hello Giles. Do you have any news for us?”

“Yes, Buffy. Dawn has isolated the cause of Talitha Sands’s death.”

Buffy felt strangely apathetic, “Well? Shoot, Giles. It’s about time for another apocalypse.”

A heavy sigh could be heard over the telephone line, “Buffy, Talitha died of the same virus that killed your daughter’s namesake. The one we were all hoping wouldn’t come.”

Across the ocean, Giles heard the thud of a telephone receiver hitting the floor.
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