Author’s Note: I hope there’s not too much back-fill in this chapter. But I didn’t think it was reasonable to have Buffy go much longer without starting to ask some of these questions. Please let me know what you think; feedback is much appreciated. Thanks as always to Kar and my readers.

In our third installment there are at least a few answers.


Chapter Three

She walked and talked. She drank. She studied him over the rim of her glass and smiled. She commented his apartment actually looked less lived in than the crypt. None of it seemed real to Spike. He waited for something else, some other shoe to drop and rip her away. He'd blink, and she would be gone.

Instead she just drained her glass and started wandering around the place, poking the couch and giving the closets curious glances, visibly restraining herself from flinging the doors open.

“So after Oxford, where did Dawn go?”

“Spain. Said she wanted somewhere warm like home, but with fewer horned beasts. Taught English at some little college. Came back to visit a few times, not often enough.”

“Any little nieces or nephews or anything?”

“Liked being independent, Dawn did.”

“It’s really strange, you know. I was so glad to feel her when she came over or whatever, but maybe I should have been sad too. Or I should be sad now, because she’s not here. But where she is… it’s good.” She turned away for a minute. It hurt to watch her longing for where she’d been. “How…”

“Car accident.”

“Oh.”

She'd had fun pummeling him, he could tell. The first night she’d been too careful, too sensitive to every little tap. The training was doing her good, putting color back in her cheeks and proving her body could feel things other than the ache and strain of every day.

That was still on her though, in the bend of her spine and the way she still flinched at the strangest things. She sat down and rubbed her neck petulantly. "Got a crick, pet?" She shrugged, so he moved around behind her and pressed his fingers into her skin.

He had fooled himself into thinking he'd gotten over her. If he had, her return wouldn't be turning him inside out though. He hadn't forgotten her; he'd just boxed her up and avoided thinking of her, which wasn't the same thing. Katya had been right; he'd never gotten past losing his slayer. She was just wrong about which one.

Buffy moaned under his touch and any lingering doubts were put to rest. He'd happily throw himself under a bus just to hear her do that again. He pressed a little harder and she began to shiver.

Her voice was husky when she spoke. "You have to stop," she whispered, licking her lips.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked, not particularly inclined to stop.

"No. Really not. It feels good. But you have to stop."

He backed away and shoved his hands in his pockets. She rested her head in her hands for a moment. "I should go."

"Please don't," he replied.

She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye. "There was someone living here with you."

"Till a few months back, yeah," he admitted. Did she think he'd been pining for her for thirty years? Or that he’d merrily thrown some poor girl over the moment she emerged from the grave? "Didn't like my working with Tashi."

"Who was before Tashi?"

"There were a few, I think. Her Watcher Connie could tell you the details. Last one they sent here was Lieuko, ten years gone. Before her there were three the Council sent ‘round the world. Would have been in a fair bind here if Faith hadn't come back.”

“Faith was a big help?” She sounded skeptical, and he let it go. Faith had mentioned a few times that she and Buffy hadn’t exactly been best pals. “Who came after me?”

“Was Kennedy after you, then Amanda, then Lisette. The Council sent the next to Boston, so we’d none until Faith came. I think they sent us Lieuko to keep an eye on Faith more than anything. After what happened with Lieuko, they’ve sent both slayers other places. Tashi is the first they sent here since Faith died. Not entirely clear why the sent her, or why they wanted my help."

“Probably because you’re such a good fighter. I mean, you came really close to kicking my ass a few times,” she told him, but he could tell she was really thinking about all the other slayers. She’d have more questions about Lieuko in time, but that wasn’t his story to tell. Or anyway, he didn’t want to tell it. If he’d been around to witness more of it, it might never have happened.

“Come on, pet, I’ll walk you back to Harris’s place.”

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Buffy watched Spike as they walked back to Xander’s house. When she was with him, things didn’t seem that different. Houses looked pretty much the same as they passed them in the dark. People walking down the sidewalks seemed a little nervous and rushed, but that wasn’t exactly new in Sunnydale either. Something was different about Spike, but he didn’t look different, and he still talked the same, mostly. He was less braggy about tearing people’s spines out. She would have to ask Xander when he’d officially turned into a white hat.

He’d really stuck around all those years. Maybe he really had started to change before she’d died. She had to admit he was probably right about that. Could be he was wrong about loving her though, because if she was what was changing him, why keep doing it after she died?

Unless he was already changed, and maybe that was partly because of her, and she had officially made herself dizzy.

Xander threw open the door and gave them a sad little wave. “Jess is here,” he announced.

“Right then. I’ll be off.” Buffy wanted to ask Spike why, but he just nodded at her and told her he’d see her the following evening. Then he did that swishy coat, fade into the dark of night thing he liked to do. Some things, indeed, didn’t change.

So Jess and Spike, another thing she’d have to ask Xander about. She sighed and followed Xander into the house.

“Hey! Dad! Did I just hear that assho—whoa!”

Buffy had flipped through a few photo albums, but they were all of Jess as a kid. She had been in too much of a daze to ask herself whether he looked more like Anya or Xander, and anyway she’d always found that kind of endless feature matching exhausting when Mom and Aunt Darlene had done it on her.

So seeing grown-up Jess was a bit shocking. Because at the quarter century mark, it was immediately evident who he looked like.

Xander gave her a knowing look over Jesse’s shoulder and nudged him to stop his blatant ogling. “Buffy, this is my son, Jess.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He goggled at her a minute and then shook her hand. “So. You’re a friend of Dad’s?” he asked, giving Xander an outrageously unsubtle ‘way to go, Dad!’ look.

“Yeah. A really old friend of your dad’s,” she replied. But really, in terms of years lived, Jess was actually older than her. The headache was coming back.

A horn honked outside. “I gotta run, so you’ll have to explain that later.”

As soon as they heard the car speeding off down the street, Xander spoke. “Yeah. I know. It wasn’t as obvious when he was a kid, but ever since he hit his teens: Ripper, Jr.”

“How?”

Xander smirked. “The usual way. Understand, I knew, before he was even born. I did the math and I knew. I really didn’t know what I was going to do at first, but Anya had some complications and she was too sick to really take care of him the first few weeks. And it’s not like Giles could come around and help. By the time he was two weeks old, he was mine. Fuck biology.”

Buffy had to sit down. Dear Lord! popped into her head, but she stopped herself from saying it. “Giles? I mean… I don’t even know what to say.”

Xander shrugged. “Anya and I never should have gotten married in the first place, and after Will— the slayer after you, when she died, I started drinking pretty heavily. I was either at work or the bar. I think it started then, because I was so drunk when I got home most of the time, I didn’t even notice if Anya was in the bed with me or not. After I got cleaned up, things just weren’t the same. When Jess came along we tried counseling, because, you know, you’re supposed to keep it together for the kids.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “that always works out well.”

He nodded. “We split when he was three, and I told her I’d let her have the house, my quarter of the store, everything if she let me have primary custody.”

“Xander.” She felt horrible asking him, because he’d already made with the big confessions – like really big – but she’d noticed his earlier slip. “Please tell me what happened with Willow.”

He took a seat across from her. “Kennedy, the slayer after you, she and Willow hooked up. Fell hard and fast, though for the life of me I will never understand what Willow saw in her. Anyway, some really ridiculous normal human guys killed Kennedy. And then Willow killed them. In some really creative ways. Someone noticed and thought she did some super work settling the score.”

Buffy blinked at him a few times. Settling the score. “Willow is a vengeance demon now?”

Xander nodded, then reached out and squeezed her hand. “Any way we could go back to talking about my wife cheating on me with a guy twice my age? Because, let me tell you, way less painful topic.”

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Okay, please let me have it.