Author's Note: The "Interregnum" is starting to come together. If you're still with me, please review.
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IN THE INTERREGNUM-

Spike pleaded with the spirits, “I understand, I do. I know what’s at stake,” he looked, sadly, over at Buffy and Joni as they stood huddled together, trying not to look as devastated as he felt.

“Child, you understand that if this is done the other will receive the thing that should rightfully be yours.”

“What?” Spike gasped.

“It is done, and it will not be undone. We have done as you requested, child. We can do nothing more,” the angel he had pinned his daughter’s future to, and Buffy’s as well, disappeared from sight.

For an instant, nothing moved. Nothing could. Even here, Angelus had managed to best him. He just couldn’t fathom it.

He turned when he heard his daughter and wife sobbing. He saw the pain on their faces, and tried to smile, “You be good now, Joni. Take care of your Mum. She’s gonna need you,” he looked at Buffy longingly as he wiped away her tears, “No tears now, Love. Please? I couldn’t take it. We know I don’t belong here now. Maybe I never did.”

“That’s not true, Spike!” she sobbed, “You…”

He shook his head, resigned to his fate, “That may have been true once, Love,” he shrugged, “But I never really belonged anywhere. I’m used to it,” the next words came out quickly, for fear that they would be taken from him before he could say them, “I love you,” he was desperate, “Remember that, please!”

In the blink of an eye, they disappeared. And he was alone again.

He was numb again. Dead. He’d been alive, through them. He’d been warm. Living, breathing and alive. Now he was not.

A primal rage boiled up in his veins, and he howled as he felt his heart tearing away from his body.

The unearthly noise brought Joyce out of her shock. She watched as Spike paced mindlessly. It made sense. When a soul is overburdened, it falls back to what it knows best. It goes back to the basic functions of comfort. He was blind to all but his pain.

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.

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Spike’s eyes remained hooded in deference of all that Joyce and nameless others had sacrificed to bring him here. He was well aware that his place here was tenuous, at best, “I understand,” he tried to keep the tremor out of his voice, “I won’t tell them. I’ll take it slow. I won’t push. She can take as long as she likes. It wouldn’t be the same if she weren’t ready. But, Joni,” his voice was tight, “I love her. I think you know that. I have to be near, to help her,” he pleaded with the Spirit that held his life in the balance, “If I’m not with her, she could get lost again. And it could all happen again,” he felt the tears as they slid down his face, “Then, all that I’ve done will have been for nothing. I swear, they won’t know it’s me. I won’t reveal myself until they’re ready.”
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NOVEMBER 10, 2O28

As Joni walked home from the graveyard, she went over everything she had told the old gardener. She remembered being told, through the haze of her Mother’s pain, that something had happened to her when she was a baby. Something that she didn’t remember, but her Mother did, and whatever it was, she hoped that she would never remember it.

That was when Homer’s words came home. If, in the afterlife, it were possible to change things, what would they change?
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OCTOBER 22, 2005

“But it’s sheer poetry, don’t you understand that?” Holland did his best not to openly guffaw at the look on Angel’s face, “What better way to take a champion out of the game than to take his child from him?” he shrugged his shoulder, and his lips pulled themselves into a sneer. His eyes glowed with a malicious light, “It’s worked to our advantage before. It might again.”

Angel squinted his eyes at Holland, “What?” he paced his small basement apartment furiously, “I’m beginning to think Spike may have been right all along. What have you got against this little girl? She’s so tiny, she can’t even breathe on her own. She may die before she even leaves the hospital,” Angel’s throat felt raw as he drew breath to speak and pointed an accusatory finger at his own accuser, “I gave up my hope. You, and the Circle saw to that,” Angel lowered his eyes in shame, “I’ve watched him bonding with that little girl,” Angel tore his eyes from the floor and lifted them to the darkness that seemed to mock him from the world outside, “They’ve even painted rainbows in that child’s room,” the pain of his own failure crept into his throat, “A nursery she may not even live to see,” Angel turned questioning eyes to Holland, “Do you know how rare a thing like that is, for creatures like us? Rainbows? That’s like blue roses for humans. It just doesn’t happen. Not in our world. Yet he paints them. And do you know why?”

Holland gave an uninterested grunt, “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Because he believes!” Angel shouted as he came up into Holland’s face, “Because something in that annoying little fop refused to die, when Drusilla sired him. He’s still a poet! He still believes that day follows night. And that’s why he paints rainbows,” he let out a deep sigh as he backed away from his tormenter, “I had that spark once too. When Connor was here, I believed in things I didn’t see. I believed in the sunshine, even though I knew I’d never have it. But then Connor was taken from me, and the hope left. I will not take that from him.”

“You love him with a Father’s love, don’t you?”

“Connor? Of course I do.”

Holland shook his head and sighed, “No, I’m not talking about Connor. I’m talking about William.”

“Yes,” Angel admitted.

“Sometimes a Father must choose the lesser of two evils to save his son,” Holland said, somberly.
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