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Stars in Bright Sky by Lilachigh
 
Chp 2 Before I Change my Mind
 
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Stars in the Bright Sky by Lilachigh


Chapter 2 - Before I change my mind


It’s Christmas Eve and Buffy gets to discover just what secret Spike is
keeping.


Without thinking, Buffy reached out and grasped the young girl’s hand as
she groaned under her contraction. Then she gently pulled down the
remnants of her skirt over her thighs and turned to where Spike sat on the
other side of the bed.

For a second or two, she couldn’t even find the words, then, ‘Spike, who is she? What the hell is going on? She’s having a baby!’

The vampire raised a rather weary eyebrow at her. ‘Hey, guessed that all by myself, Jessica Fletcher! It was difficult, but the big stomach, pain, groans, blood - it all gave the game away.’

Buffy glared at him, then turned to the girl. ‘Hey,’ she said gently, pushing her dark hair back from her sweaty forehead. ‘Who are you?’

The girl squeezed her hand. ‘Lucy,’ she muttered, then shut her eyes as if speaking the one word had been too much to bear.

‘Spike, how long as she been like this? We must get her to the hospital.’

‘No! No hospital!’ The pressure on Buffy’s hand increased seven fold.

Spike sighed and got up to wring out a wet cloth in a bowl of cool water and lay it on Lucy’s forehead. ‘That’s all she’s said from the second I found her inside the top crypt when I got home earlier. She’s not only in labour, she’s got some sort of gun shot wound to her arm. I’ve bound that up, but that’s where most of the blood’s come from.’

He turned to look at Buffy, his blue eyes very bright in the dim candlelight. ‘I haven’t been sampling, if that’s what you were thinking, pet!’

Buffy went very red. She could never tell him what she’d been thinking. She was only too aware of the stake she’d pushed back into her jeans’ pocket. She had been going to kill him, the man she loved, thinking she was saving an innocent from a monster.

‘She was already well along with the labour. I don’t think we’ve got time to get her to the hospital.’

‘Well, a doctor, then. I’ll run.’

‘No!’ The grip came again, strangely powerful for someone who looked so weak. ‘The police will find me and take me back to prison.’

‘The police!’ Suddenly it was as if a light had been turned on. ‘You’re the dangerous criminal the police are searching for!’

‘Yes...oh, god, here it comes again.’

Her body writhed as the pain took her again. Buffy stared desperately at
Spike. ‘She doesn’t look like a criminal. She’s only a couple of years older than Dawn, for heaven’s sake!’

‘I don’t look like an evil thing, luv, but that’s what you often call me.’

Lucy came back to them. ‘Listen, I don’t know who you both are, but
please, please, let me have my baby out of prison. I don’t want it born in jail. That’s why I jumped off the bus taking me to the prison hospital. I want it to be born free. They’re going to take it away from me and I’ll never see it again.’

‘What did you do?’ Buffy asked, making her more comfortable on the untidy bed and trying hard not to remember the last time she’d been lying there herself, locked in Spike’s arms for hours and hours.

‘I shot a guy,’ Lucy said briefly, then her face contorted again with the onset of another contraction.

‘Spike, those pains are very close together. Do you think - ?’

‘I think we’re going to have a baby, Buffy, and very soon.’

‘But I don’t know anything about having babies!’

He grinned. ‘Well, I must admit in over a hundred years, I have learnt one or two things about women, but being vampires, not too much about babies!’

Buffy’s head whirled with odd, disjointed thoughts. Hot water, scissors,
towels, long ago memories of a class she and Willow had taken together
where the teacher had been embarrassed and the kids had got the giggles when the birth process was taught.

All they’d really cared about was how you got pregnant in the first place, or not, to be more accurate. Television programmes where people screamed in pain and then only a couple of minutes later were sitting up in bed, hair neat and tidy, with a pretty little baby lying in their arms, clean and sweet.

The next hour went past in a dark whirl. Later Buffy knew she could never have done it without Spike. They worked as a team, the other always seeming to know effortlessly what their partner wanted.

In a little pause, Lucy seemed to doze off. Buffy had the feeling they were on the final lap. She tried to ease her aching shoulders and was grateful to feel Spike’s fingers digging deep into the tense muscles across the back of her neck.

‘Oh god, that feels great. Do it again. Please.’

‘I always like to hear you say that, Slayer.’

Buffy smiled weakly. ‘Shut up, Spike. I’m too tired to - Just go on doing what you‘re doing and I might survive the next hour.’

‘I hope Lucy does.’

Buffy spun round, catching her breath as she realised how close he was
standing behind her. ‘Do you think she’s in danger?’

Spike shrugged. ‘She’s very young, scared and having her baby in a
vampire’s crypt with two inefficient midwives trying to help. She lost a lot of blood when they shot her.’

‘So what’s the good news?’

Spike rubbed his thumb down her cheek in a gentle caress. ‘We‘re the
midwives, pet. Inefficient we might be, but no one dies when we’re in
charge - unless we want them to!’

Half an hour later, there was a new sound in Spike’s crypt, one he’d never thought he’d ever hear. The mewling wail of a new born baby.

‘It’s a girl!’ Buffy sobbed, trying to dash away the tears that were tracing
down her face as she wrapped the tiny infant in one of Spike’s bright red
towels.

The last few minutes were a complete blur - she vaguely recalled Spike in game face, yelling at Lucy who seemed to have given up, screaming, ‘Only you can have this baby! Come on, girl, push, push, push!’

And here it was. Tiny, blood smeared, a shock of dark hair, and a red face screwed up and cross.

She laid the baby across Lucy’s chest and the girl gazed down at her and Buffy thought she’d never, ever forget the expression on her face. She bit her lip hard. She had no illusions about the life of a Slayer. It was very doubtful if she’d ever experience having children of her own. When she saw how Lucy looked at her daughter, she realised, with a terrible clarity, how big a sacrifice she was making.

Lucy dozed off to sleep and Buffy picked up the baby and crawled up the steps to the upper crypt. Spike had been dealing with the nastier side of childbirth and Buffy ignored the fact that he was absentmindedly sucking blood from a finger.

‘Look what we did?’ she said proudly.

‘How’s Lucy?’ he asked softly.

‘Sleeping. Here - want to have a look?’

Spike stood about a yard away, put his hands firmly behind his back and peered. ‘Oh yes. Baby. Looks a bit small. And should she be that ugly? Looks like old pictures of Winston Churchill.’

‘She’s absolutely perfect!’ Buffy hissed crossly. ‘Don’t listen to the nasty man, darling. You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?’

Spike gazed at the woman he loved, her tousled blonde hair bent over the baby she was cradling at her breast. He reached forward and laid a gentle hand on the child and they stood together for a long moment, knowing this was as close as he would ever come to complete happiness.

He gazed round the crypt, at the darkness, the candles, the cobwebs and stone and smiled grimly to himself. A man, a woman and a baby in a dark hole in the ground. Well, it was Christmas.

Buffy looked up and caught the expression on his face. She felt her heart lurch, knowing instinctively what he was thinking. Why did that happen? How could they be so linked that she sometimes knew what he was going to say before he said it. Evil vampire, she repeated the mantra again, but knew it was no use. The words meant nothing to her where Spike was concerned.

They carried the baby downstairs and Buffy wedged the bundle into the
crook of Lucy’s undamaged arm. She was awake now, but looked awful.

‘Lucy, I know what it means to you,’ Buffy began, ‘but you simply have to go to the hospital now. I don’t know if we did it right. The birthing thing. What with the scissors and the pushing and....well, you have to let a doctor look at you.’

Lucy kissed the baby’s head. ‘I know. I’ve got to go back to prison. I
deserve to. I killed that guy. He was no good, but that’s no excuse. But, Buffy, I don’t want baby to come with me.’

‘But Lucy...’

‘I’ve got a sister, lives thirty miles the other side of town. I’ll give you her details. Please, Buffy, get the baby to her. She’ll raise her, keep her safe. No one will ever find her there.’

Buffy stared at her. This was madness. She couldn’t take a newborn baby away from her mother and it was Christmas Eve and she should be home and Dawn would be so worried and...

And this could be Dawn in a couple of years time, a voice inside her head whispered. If life turned against her in some way. Would you let her down?

‘But what will you tell the authorities? They’ll want to know where the
baby is?’

Lucy smiled weakly. She gazed up at Spike. ‘I’ll tell them she was taken by a monster. They’ll believe that.’

‘Hey, standing right here,’ Spike said edgily, then grinned. ‘OK by me, luv. Got a bad reputation, anyhow. Not sure if I want to be known for killing babies, but hey, if it keeps Pipsqueak here safe, my shoulders are broad enough to take it.’

Suddenly, from above their heads came a thunderous crashing on the outer crypt door. Buffy could hear shouting, dogs barking. It was the police! They’d come back with bloodhounds and tracked Lucy down.

‘You must go!’ the girl gasped. ‘Look, my sister’s called Rebecca Mason and lives on a farm, Whiteacre. She knows all about the baby. Just take her. Please. Go, go now.’

Spike was already moving towards the back entrance. ‘I’ll push a boulder over the passage once we’re clear,’ he said briefly.‘Hopefully, once they’ve found you, they won’t look for anyone else.’

Lucy gave the baby a despairing kiss and thrust her at Buffy. ‘Take her!
Now! Before I change my mind!’

To be continued
















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