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The Road to Hell... by All4Spike
 
Chapter 7
 
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Chapter 7
 
Buffy gasped as she was swept away by a relentless tsunami of memories.
 
The events of the previous three years tumbled about and were rearranged in her mind. As the mists of confusion cleared, a stream of additional experiences slotted neatly into the unexplained blanks that had troubled her so much.
 
Almost all of them featuring Spike.
 
After a few moments, when the initial shock had worn off, and oblivious to the tears streaming down her cheeks, she turned to meet Spike’s eyes.
 
He gazed at her in awe, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Without a word, he opened his arms to her.
 
She quickly took the three steps she needed to close the distance between them, slipped her arms around his waist under his duster and laid her forehead on his chest. She inhaled deeply of the comforting, familiar scents of aged leather, cigarettes and whiskey, and the unique spicy tang of Spike.
 
He rested his cheek upon the top of her head and wrapped his strong arms around her. “Missed you, love,” he whispered hoarsely. “Even when I didn’t know that it was you I was missing.”
 
“Missed you too,” she mumbled into the soft, damp cotton of his t-shirt. “Missed you so much.”
 
Buffy could have happily remained standing there enfolded in Spike’s arms for hours, but it was mere seconds before Xander’s high-pitched, panicked cries intruded.
 
“Spike? That’s Spike! What? Why? How?” He took a deep gasping breath and in a slightly more controlled tone demanded, “Willow? Why is Buffy cuddling up to the evil dead… again? You said she needed to forget an unsuitable boyfriend, you never said it was Spike!
 
Buffy couldn’t ignore that little revelation. She turned in Spike’s arms and glared at Xander, dashing her tears away with her hand. “You knew? You knew all this time and you never said anything?”
 
Xander held up his hands defensively. “I knew then. Then I didn’t know.” He turned accusingly to Willow. “Why is it you made me not know?”
 
“You know perfectly well you’d never have been able to keep it a secret for long. I was doing you a huge favour!”
 
Willow faced Buffy and tossed back her hair defiantly. “You were so unhappy, Buffy! You kept bursting into tears! You told me all about your summer with Spike and how you were afraid to tell your Mom and Giles about him.”
 
“Of course I was unhappy!” Buffy yelled. She pressed her fingers to her lips and took a deep breath before continuing more quietly, “I’d just said goodbye to my lover and I knew I wasn’t going to see him for a while! I knew Giles and Mom wouldn’t like it at first, but I also knew that they loved me and would want me to be happy.” She glanced at Giles and admitted sheepishly, “I figured that by the time Spike got back into town, I’d have talked them around.”
 
Giles slowly shook his head and returned a wry smile as he frantically polished his glasses.
 
“Well, you didn’t tell me Spike was supposed to come back too! Since you’d come back without him, I decided it would be better for you to make a fresh start without those memories. Can’t you see? I did it for you!”
 
“No, you did it for you, Willow. To make me over the way you wanted. How dare you…?”
 
Willow waved away Buffy’s protest and defensively added, “Of course, you didn’t tell me about…” Willow broke off with a guilty grimace.
 
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that! There was the small matter of the fact I didn’t know myself yet!” Frowning, Buffy asked, “Why didn’t you break the spell when we found out?”
 
Willow gave a guilty little shrug. “If I’d broken the spell, you’d have known I did it? Besides, you know, evil vampire. You were so much better off without him.”
 
While Buffy spluttered helplessly, speechless with indignation, Xander pointed at Buffy and Spike and exclaimed, “Oh god! No! Does this mean…? It’s impossible! Someone please tell me it’s not so!”
 
Nodding at him, Buffy said sarcastically, “Yes, Willow. Thank you for blocking that out for me. You know how bad it was when I had no idea how it happened. I’ve been going crazy not knowing who or how…”
 
An insistent tug on her trouser leg broke her train of thought and caused her to look down.
 
“Mommy?”
 
Smiling, she slipped from Spike’s embrace and crouched down. “What are you doing out of bed, Jellybean?”
 
The little girl in the Winnie the Pooh footie pyjamas held up the huge, garishly coloured stuffed tiger she was dragging by its tail. “Mister Tigger wants a dink’o water.”
 
Chuckling, Buffy stood and hoisted the curly haired blonde toddler up to sit astride her hip. “Well, perhaps we should get Mister Tigger his drink, and then you can both go back to sleep.”
 
She looked up to see Spike’s expression of wide-eyed astonishment turn very quickly to a scowl of hurt and anger. She realised that she owed Spike an explanation.
 
He took a step away from her and folded his duster around himself in a gesture she immediately recognised as him trying to cut himself off from a painful situation. She laid her free hand on his arm and said quietly, “It’s not what you think. I can explain…”
 
Before she could say anything else, a chubby little finger tapped her on the cheek.
 
“Mommy? Why’s dere a nampire in our houst?”
 
Buffy glanced at her daughter. Her big blue eyes were fixed upon Spike in total fascination. “Don’t worry, Jellybean. This is a special vampire.”
 
Buffy looked between her daughter and Spike then threw a quick glance over her shoulder at Giles who gave her a resigned little nod. She’d been thinking that she should tell Spike on his own first, and then explain to her mother and Giles, but this was the perfect opportunity to get it out in the open once and for all.
 
She took a deep breath.
 
“Annie, this is your daddy.”
 
She looked up to see Spike’s angry, sceptical frown.
 
Annie’s rosebud mouth formed a perfectly round O of surprise. Then she whispered excitedly, “I has a daddy!” Cocking her head to one side coquettishly, she shyly asked Spike, “Is it p’tend, or is you my really real daddy?”
 
When Spike directed a desperately pleading look her way, Buffy smiled and nodded in confirmation.
 
Spike broke into a broad grin and tentatively raised a hand to touch Annie’s head. “Well, Moptop. Not sure how, but yes. Seems I’m your really real daddy.”
 
Buffy let out an explosive grunt when a small foot dug into her stomach. Mister Tigger fell forgotten to the floor and Annie lurched forward in her arms, launching herself at Spike who was so startled he barely managed to catch her.
 
With her arms wrapped tightly around Spike’s neck, Annie declared, “I did missded you!”
 
“I missed you too, pet.” Spike’s voice was thick with emotion. He looked at Buffy and asked in disbelief, “You called her Annie? Like my mum?”
 
“Yeah.” Buffy smiled. “It’s Victoria Anne, actually, but we decided to go with Annie. It’s a Summers family name too. It just felt right.”
 
She transferred her attention to Annie. Having completely accepted Spike as her daddy, she tenderly patted his cheek and calmly asked, “Can I sees your scary face?”
 
“I don’t know about that, pet. Mummy might not like it.” Spike’s eyes flicked warily to Buffy. “I don’t want to frighten you.”
 
“I’s not scared. ’Sides, if you turn into a bad nampire, my mommy will hit you wiv a stick and you’ll go ‘way.” Annie shook her head vigorously, causing her Shirley Temple curls to bounce madly. “But I don’t want you to go ‘way, so don’t be bad.”
 
Fresh tears came to Buffy’s eyes as for the first time she realised just how much her life as the slayer had impacted on her daughter. She nodded permission to Spike.
 
“Better go back to your mum then, Miss Victoria Anne. You’ll feel safer with her and you’ll be able to see me better.”
 
“’M’kay, Daddy.”
 
Once Buffy had Annie comfortably settled on her hip, Spike slowly allowed his face to change.
 
Buffy gripped Annie securely, preparing to soothe tears of distress. She didn’t need to.
 
Utterly unafraid, Annie leant forward in her arms, reaching out to stroke Spike’s lumpy forehead. “Does it hurt?”
 
“Does what hurt, pet?”
 
“When you go all grrr…” She scrunched up her face and bared her tiny teeth. “’ike ‘at.”
 
Spike chuckled. “No, doesn’t hurt. Feels a bit strange at first, but you get used to it.”
 
After a while, Annie relaxed back against Buffy’s shoulder and nodded that she’d finished her examination. “You got pitty lellow eyes, but I like your blue eyes better. Dey’s like mine.”
 
Smiling, Spike allowed his face to revert to his human mask. “I think you have pretty eyes too, Moptop.”
 
“Uh, Annie dear, just how did you know that William is a vampire?”
 
Buffy hadn’t noticed Giles coming up behind her shoulder, but now that he’d asked, she was curious to know as well.
 
Annie shrugged disinterestedly. “Dunno.”
 
Buffy exchanged a startled look with Giles but before either of them could comment, their attention was drawn back to Spike.
 
With his gaze fixed upon Annie, he had vamped out again and looked as though he was trying to bite a chunk out of his own wrist.
 
Ignoring the exclamations of horror and fear behind her, Buffy kept all her focus on Spike, wondering what he was intending to do.
 
“Blood of my blood,” Spike intoned. He dipped a finger in the raw wound and glancing imploringly at Buffy, raised his hand towards Annie.
 
“Trust me, slayer?” he whispered.
 
Buffy smiled. “Always.”
 
“Scion of the Aurelian line.” Spike dabbed a single smudge of blood onto Annie’s forehead between her wide, excited eyes. “My blood for your blood until the end of time.” He casually licked away the blood smeared from the already closing wound on his wrist and shifted back into his human face.
 
Buffy had the feeling that she had just witnessed something of momentous importance. “Uh, what just happened?”
 
“A blood oath!” Anya whispered reverently. “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never…”
 
Buffy turned to see Anya shaking her head helplessly, her lips pressed together in a thin line. She was clinging tightly to Xander’s arm. Xander’s face was flushed and angry and he was straining against her grip. Anya had clearly held him back from interfering in Spike’s vampiric ritual.
 
Sensing movement to one side, Buffy looked and saw Tara releasing her grip on Willow’s shoulder and taking several steps away from the redhead.
 
It was evident that Xander and Willow didn’t trust Spike as much as she did, and Buffy understood why that may be. She had a whole heap of explaining to do.
 
But first, she had a question. “A blood oath?”
 
Before anyone could speak, a loud yawn at her shoulder distracted her. “Hold that thought,” she said, raising a finger to forestall any response. “I’ll be back in a minute. Someone needs to have her drink and get back to bed.” She turned towards the kitchen, grabbing Spike by the sleeve of his duster. “Come on, Daddy. Time for your introduction to the nightly battle of bedtime.”
 


 
A/N
‘Mr Tigger’ is of course a soft toy in the form of Tigger from the ‘Winnie the Pooh’ stories by A.A. Milne. I’m not sure who currently owns the rights, whether it is the estate of A.A. Milne or Disney or someone else, but whoever does, it’s certainly not ickle me!
 
You may well think that Annie is verbally very precocious for a not quite two year old. You may well be correct. Please could you just go with it?


 
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