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Future Imperfect by Lilachigh
 
Chp 7 Power Play
 
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FUTURE IMPERFECT

Chp 7 Power Play


Buffy sat on the edge of the sofa and stared up at her husband. Spike was studying the whisky in his glass. He seemed unaware of the bombshell he’d just thrown, but she knew him too well not to guess that behind that poker face, his emotions were churning as much as hers.

“You think David isn’t the twins’ father?” she got out eventually.

Spike glanced up at her and winced at the pain and shock on her face.

“I know you wanted to kill David at the time,” she said dryly. “I had to stop you tearing him limb from limb, slowly over a week. You didn‘t seem to be asking who else was involved then.”

Spike tossed back the Scotch and came to sit next to her. He draped his arm round her stiff shoulders but she refused to relax and he moved away a little to give her some space. “OK, at the time I thought it was David. They were going out together. The Rosenbergs thought it was him. And, to be fair, he never denied it.”

“Maybe he thought he was the father,” Buffy whispered.

“Maybe he did, pet.” Spike brushed the thought aside. Even after all these years it was difficult for him to imagine his fifteen-year-old daughter having sex with different men. But the twins lying in their beds upstairs were living proof that she had!

“Now you’re not sure?”

Spike sighed. “Sweetheart, we’ve got two grandchildren and, not to mince words, they‘re both odd. I don’t think we’ve got any idea how weird, to be honest. Their mother is the daughter of a Slayer and me, a vampire. And one who’s been given part of the Shanshu prophecy. Is that parentage enough to create two children with such powers if their father is just an ordinary guy? OK, a nice guy, a great guy. I like David. But is he the twins’ natural father? I just doubt it.”

Buffy took a deep breath and folded her arms across her stomach. She ached with the pain of how badly she had failed her daughter. If Spike was right, if Shanny had got herself pregnant by someone who wasn’t David, then how scared and alone she must have felt. And if that had been true, even then she had never turned to her mother for help.

Buffy knew that if that had happened to her, she would have gone to Joyce. OK, she would probably have told Willow first, but then she would have told her mother. But the first she had heard about her own daughter had been that awful phone call…


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Buffy?”

“Hi, Willow! Great to hear you. How’s things?”

“Well….”

”Where are you, Will? Still in England. We’re in Spain. Madrid. Spike got a lead on that Spenquway demon gathering. We reckon we could get the whole gross, icky lot this time.”

“No, I’m not in England…”

“Oh, don’t tell me, I can guess. Oz has finally managed to persuade you to go out to New Zealand with him. I thought he – ”

“Buffy! Listen. I’m with Shanny.”

“Sorry, Will, I thought you said Shanny. The reception’s dreadful here.”

“Buffy, you and Spike need to come to Los Angeles at once.”

“What’s happened? Oh my god – Spike! Spike! - Willow, is she OK. Tell me.”

“She’s fine. Well, nearly fine. Buffy, there’s no easy way of telling you this. Shanny’s pregnant.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Buffy stared at Spike, remembering too clearly their hurried flight across the Atlantic, the awful meeting with Shanny that they had handled so badly. Spike had been in a raging fury – not so much with his beloved daughter, but with young David, who’d stood there, his hand on Shanny’s shoulder, facing up to a vampire in full game face who’d been threatening to kill him there and then.

Buffy had been even angrier – but, and she had to admit it – her fury had been directed at Shanny. How stupid. How irresponsible. How insane. She’d thrown all that at her. Why? Why hadn’t she been more sympathetic, comforting, helpful?

Because I felt so wretchedly guilty, she thought now. We’d sent her away to keep her safe, to give her a normal life, the type of life I never had. And that had been an enormous sacrifice. We missed her so much, but we’d done it for her and this was how she’d repaid us. But if we’d kept her with us, then she wouldn’t have been expecting a baby at fifteen….

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Shanny and David sat in her bedroom, staring at each other. “Are you certain?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Shanny laughed, a tight, bitter sound. “Oh yes, I’m afraid so. I think I’m about four months pregnant, David.“

“Oh God! I am so sorry! But we only – well, it was just the once – surely – I thought, perhaps you were on the Pill.”

“No,” Shanny said briefly, wishing with all her heart that she had been. But she’d never thought, never believed - “It only takes one time. That’s for sure.”

David scrubbed at his face with his fists, then looked at her again, seemingly having rubbed away the boy. A man sat there now. “I’m twenty. We can marry when you’re sixteen. It’ll be OK, Shanny. I’ll look after you; you know I love you.”

Shanny felt the first tiny whisper of warmth creep into her soul, which had been frozen and cold since she’d done the test two weeks before. David loved her. David wanted to look after her. He was the only person in the world who did.

“I’m going to tell Willow,” she said, not believing how calm she sounded. What had happened to the girl who’d lain in bed in this room for night after night, hysterically crying into her pillow, wishing she were dead?

“Yes, Willow will help. And – your parents?”

“Oh yes, I suppose they’d better know,” Shanny said coolly. “I’m sure they’ll be upset, but then they live abroad; it won’t worry them that much. They’ll be more concerned by my not going to college, but then, I’ve never been very bright, anyway. No biggie.”

David reached out and took her hand. It felt very small and cold in his. He had loved Shanny Summers from the second he met her. He could think of nothing better than marrying her and raising their family. OK, they were stupidly young, but hey, these things happened. He would finish college and law school, and a job in his father’s firm was guaranteed. It would be difficult, but not impossible.

“You didn’t – Shanny, don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’d wanted to get rid of the baby – well, I’m just so pleased you didn’t.”

Shanny smiled gravely. “No, David, it never occurred to me.”

He moved to sit next to her on the bed and they sat with their arms tightly around each other, both staring into the future – one in hopeful expectation, the other in cold dread. Shanny knew that her last remark had been a lie, probably not the first one she would tell him, she thought drearily.

The biggest lie of all was when she’d told him the baby was his. Well, it still might be! She tried to hold on to the thought, but knew she was cheating herself as well as David. Because she’d done the sums, counted the days on her calendar and knew that when she’d slept with David, she’d already been three weeks pregnant.

And that meant – the memory came flooding back – the party – the drink – a lot of much older guys – some of them grown men, not boys. She’d been so angry with her parents for not ringing on her birthday – there’d been one guy; he’d had a lot to drink, too. He’d been part of the group, out celebrating someone’s birthday, too. They’d been happy. She’d laughed. She’d wanted to teach her parents a lesson. She’d gone to the party a virgin and came away pregnant. And she didn’t even know his name.

But she didn’t care. This baby had nothing to do with him. It was all hers. She would love it and care for it and keep it safe. And it would never have anything to do with vampires or witches or magic, ever!

* * * * * * * * * *


“So you think that whoever got Shanny pregnant was – is – god, I don’t know! What, Spike? You think she slept with a demon? Is that it?”

Spike leapt to his feet and strode round the room as if there was no longer enough space in the world to keep him happy. “No, I doubt if she’d still be here if it had been a demon and Shanny was far too well trained to let a vampire anywhere near her. But Buffy, think about those kids upstairs. There’s a vast amount of power inside them. It can’t all come from Shanny alone.”

“OK, supposing you’re right – I don’t say you are, but just supposing. Do you really think she’s going to tell us now, after nearly ten years have gone by? Spike, she hardly talks to us about anything. The fun subject of who she had sex with ten years ago isn’t going to make her all confidence girl with the parents she obviously thinks are a waste of space!”

“What about Willow? She’s always been close to her. Let’s face it, she was the one Shanny told first.”

Buffy heard the pain in his voice and knew it was echoed in her own face. At the time there had been all the worry of Shanny’s pregnancy, David’s insistence that he would marry her when she was sixteen, the recriminations, the arguments, the practicalities involved because, hey, there was still a Demon War going on in Europe and although it was nearly over, there were still little pockets of resistance that needed to be wiped out. She and Spike were needed badly in Spain.

But running underneath all of that, Buffy remembered the pain of jealousy that had flooded through her whenever she recalled that it had been to Willow her daughter had turned to when she needed someone to help her – Willow, not her parents, definitely not her mother.

And, she had to admit to herself that it had coloured her whole relationship with her best friend ever since. Oh, they’d worked together to make sure Shanny was well looked after. Willow had been there when the twins were delivered: she’d seen them directly after Buffy and Spike. Joyce and Billy had seemed like a miracle to her. Her cousin David was their father. That made them her blood relations, the closest she would ever get to her own children.

Buffy admitted she’d felt jealous as the years had passed. And it had all come to a head when Shanny had banished her parents from the twins’ lives, but had let Willow remain in contact.

Willow had sounded upset for Buffy, but she‘d refused to mediate with Shanny. She’d said she would lose her confidence if she didn’t respect her wishes, but Buffy had always believed that secretly she was quite pleased that the real grandparents were no longer on the scene.

“Willow would never believe in a million years that David wasn’t their father,” Buffy replied wearily. “Anyway, she’s gone back to England. I think Joyce scared her.”

Spike smiled. “She scares the hell out of me, too, pet. Now I know how powerful her magic is, I get the feeling if I tell her off for not eating her vegetables, I’ll wake up the next morning as a monkey or a rattlesnake!”

Buffy sighed. “She probably wouldn’t bother waiting till the morning! But I know what you mean. And she doesn’t even see anything wrong in what she does. You’re right, Spike. That power hasn’t come from David.”

“We need someone in L.A. to do a little detective work for us,” Spike said. “Shanny had school friends – one of them might well know who she was dating.”

He looked at Buffy and the same thought struck them at the same time.

“No way!” Buffy said, her eyes widening in shock. “I am not involving Angel in this!”

Upstairs, Billy knelt on his bed and glanced across at his twin who was fast asleep. He considered waking her, then decided the morning would be time enough. It would give him a few more hours to think about all the confused, jumbled thoughts he’d read in Granny’s mind. A lot about his Mom and Dad, which he hadn’t understood. Some horrid black flashes about Auntie Willow and one enormous dark purple explosion about an angel. Which was weird, because angels were nice, helpful things, so he’d always believed. Why would Granny not want to think about an angel?


To be continued.

 
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