Disclaimer: I don’t own Spike...sad but true.

Author’s note: Thanks once again to BTL for the fab betaing. This chapter is dedicated her and her fabulousness and hard work! *hugs*

Thanks to CM, wulfie, idk, vladt, Marzbar and Tasha for the fab reviews
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Chapter 23: Family Togetherness

Buffy and Spike stepped out into the street, from the alleyway that the portal sent them to. She made no effort to extricate his hand from hers as they traversed the street and walked up the stairs to a fashionable, but old, house. She kept thinking about the amazing time they had had in his house last night. The pleasant memories were only marred by the fact that sometime today, he was going to leave her again. She tried not to dwell on that fact and instead thought about those she was about to visit.

The doorbell was rung and a blond girl, with piercing blue eyes and a few freckles answered the door.

“Grandma Erixel!” gushed the teenager. “Grandpa Spike!”

Buffy turned to look at Spike annoyed. He had obviously met Noël before. The girl stepped back from the doorway in gesture that they should enter. Noël left them to announce to the rest of the house that they had arrived.

She shouldn’t have been surprised that the vampire could pass over the threshold of the house without an invitation.

Buffy shut the door behind them as they entered, her fingers that were intertwined with Spike’s finally coming loose and her hand falling to her side, as her, correction, their, family came around the corner. Christopher, his wife, and Noël.

“Mum, Papa,” greeted Christopher, his sixty years weighing on him heavily, but with a coy smile that made his face seem younger. His parents were in the same room together for the first time since he was three. Something was up.

“Someone owes me a pound,” piped up Noël, extending her hand at her grandfather.

Christopher looked down at the teen’s extended hand and shook his head. “Later, Noël,” he muttered. “Let your great grandparents come in.”

“Yes, do come in,” agreed Christopher’s wife, Kristina, gently pushing her granddaughter into the parlour. “Can I get you something? Blood? Tea?”

“Tea would be fine, Kristina,” answered Buffy, smiling sweetly at her daughter in law as she sat on the couch in front of the chair her son sat upon.

“Spike?” asked Kristina.

“Tea’s fine, pet,” the vampire replied, sitting casually in another upholstered chair.

“Noël, come help, please,” ordered Kristina, eager to get Noël out of the parlour. She had a feeling there would be some uncomfortable discussion soon.

The moment Kristina was out of the room, the uncomfortable discussion began.

“When, if ever, were you going to tell me that you had been seeing your father?” asked Buffy, her tone not happy. She sat with her back very stiff and straight, feeling she had a right to the anger in her voice.

“For the same reason I didn’t take his money or his house, Mum,” countered Christopher. “It’s my life, I can do with it what I want. I’ve had too many people and demons try to rule my life for me, Mum, and you are one of those demons.”

A grim look passed over her face, her anger wavering just the tiniest bit.

“Do you really think it would have made any difference? Except maybe you’d hang around trying to catch a glimpse of him. I liked having the undivided attention of both my parents, even if they were separated. Imagine what it would have been like if you were together at some of those school parents days? The arguing would have led to violence on more than one occasion. I have no doubt.”

Her son’s words humbled her. “I’m sorry Christopher,” she whispered.

Christopher reached over to hold his mother’s hand. “You did your best, keeping me hidden, with secrets and lies. I grew up knowing from a very young age that it’s good to keep certain secrets, even if they are from the ones you love the most.”

“Just like you won’t bloody tell us where the rest of the grandkids are?” interjected Spike.

Christopher laughed. “Exactly. In a way I’m glad that I don’t have to keep scheduling visits.”

“I’ve never had to schedule my visits here before Christopher!” protested Buffy.

“No, but I bleedin’ have. Boy loves his mum too much if you ask me,” ranted Spike.

Buffy smiled. “And that’s a bad thing?” she asked coyly.

“So you two arriving at the same time, hand in hand...have something to tell me, or are you getting an old man’s hopes up?”

The two demons looked at each other uncomfortably before staring at the floor.

“Ah so no change then,” replied Christopher when his parents refused to say another word.
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By the time the tea was served, they had all lapsed into happy memories of Christopher’s childhood, Christopher finally being able to tell his mother about some of the fun times he had had with his father. In moments Buffy’s horrible hatred of Spike for his neglect of his son lifted as the smiles and laughter at these happy memories floated through the room.

“Of course there was that time when you crept through my dorm room window and nearly stepped on Joseph Edward’s head. He threatened to call headmaster on you. He thought you were a student!”

The laughter subsided when they all remembered what happened to John Edwards. He had been killed in the first world war.

“Grandma Erixel? When can we expect a visit from Aunty Anyanka?” asked Noël.

“She’s in Poland right now, sweetie,” answered the vengeance demon with a pat on the head to the girl.

“And Morgan?” asked the curious teen.

“Morgan should be at HQ. And he is much too old for you my dear.”
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The visit lasted as long as there was daylight in the sky. The sun had set and the whole city succumbed to the nightly black out. Spike and Buffy slipped out of Christopher’s house, and onto the street together.

“Do you want to me send you back to Germany or do you want to go to Paris and be with her?” she asked trying to catch his eye.

Spike dug into his jacket and brought out a cigarette and his lighter. “Don’t have to go quite so soon, pet. Haven’t been needed by Dru for three years now.”

“But the moment she calls to you, you’re gone,” she said her head nodding in understanding. “I get what you want Spike. I just don’t know if I can do it.”

Spike blew out a puff of smoke and focused his eyes on her. She was unchanged from the day they had met, really. Still looked like a seventeen year old. Looked like Noël’s older sister. This visit with Christopher was different from any of the other visits he’d had. This one felt right, more like a family and less like a creature of the night.

Silence was all Buffy heard in return, her resolve strengthening. “We can’t play happy family when we aren’t one. I have to get back. Morgan will need to talk to me.”

“Right,” he said blowing his smoke out into the cool night air again. “You do that and then head back here to spend me back in few days, ya?”

“I’m not your personal ferry service, Spike!”

“Well, unless I join the allies for invasion, that’s the only way I’m getting back to Occupied France isn’t it?” he snapped back.

“Not my problem Spike. Either you go now, or you make your own way back,” she declared putting her hands on her hips. “If I don’t leave you now, it will make it harder later,” she continued, her tone softening.

“Maybe we are meant to be hard?”

“Then why does it seem to be easier for you?” she asked plaintively.

Tossing his fag away, Spike gathered her up into his arms into a tight hug. “It only seems that way to you, luv.”

Minutes later, as Christopher looked out the window of his house he saw his parents engaged in the first kiss he had ever seen them have. He knew that even if this time they didn’t end up together, they would someday. It was a comforting thought.
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Buffy rolled over, the silk sliding over her skin like liquid. She couldn’t remember just how she got back to his London home. They had walked, or she thought they had anyway. What she did remember was that he was a very good kisser, and was very distracting from thoughts of returning to HQ or checking in with Morgan.

Now, it was morning and she was lying in his bed. The bed that he had slept in while he was still human. Though she doubted the sheets were the same. She really couldn’t picture human William Fairchilde sleeping in red silk sheets with any stretch of the imagination.

He wasn’t in the bed now, which was a concern. She knew he was going to leave, but she had hoped that there would be at least a passing good bye. Buffy opened her eyes, at last to see Spike staring at her.

“You and Noël could be sisters,” he said out of the blue.

“’Cept we’re not,” she stated bluntly, looking around for her clothes.

He was dressed, his blackened hair slicked back. He was ready to go. He was waiting for her to get out. She found her undergarments with ease and slipped them on as he watched. There was something he was hiding, she could see it in his eyes.

“Well, out with it, Spike,” she barked out, standing in the middle of the room clad in a pink slip.

“Dru’s calling,” he stated point of fact.

“Figures,” she almost snarled, continuing her search for her clothes.

“Sometimes I wonder at her timing though,” he started prattling on. “Three years since she needed me by her side and after one night with you, she calls me back.”

“She doesn’t want to share you,” responded Buffy, slipping on her skirt. “I’m her competition for your undead devotion. Why wouldn’t she make sure that you came crawling back as fast as possible?”

“She has nothing to be jealous of...”

And with that her world turned black. That small sentence, filled her eyes with tears. She nodded, buttoning up her blouse, trying to keep the tears at bay, regardless of the fact that he could smell them anyway. It was as if he didn’t care that his words hurt her feelings.

Buffy tucked her blouse into the waist of her skirt roughly and threw on her jacket, planting her feet into her shoes impatiently. With a sniff she looked up at him and grabbed his arm, opened a portal and pushed him, rather than guided him through.

“Oy!” he protested his harsh treatment. “Watch the leather, pet!” He pulled away from her, standing in the middle of her Arashamahar bedroom.

“Whatever, just go through the portal and leave, please,” she pleaded, trying not to sound like she was pleading.

He took another step back and crossed his arms. “What crawled up your arse?”

Buffy rolled her eyes before sending him a glare. “You know what? I hope someday, sooner rather than later you get to feel exactly what I’m feeling right now. I wish to D’Hoffryn that you’d be love’s bitch someday. I’ve had it!” She opened a portal with a thought and with a flick of her wrist sent Spike flying through it.

An hour later, her eyes red from crying, she finally got the energy up to go and check in at HQ.
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She loved her thigh calf high patent leather doc martins. She would sing their praises to just about every person she granted a wish to. Of course, most of her recent clients had been more concerned that she was going to mug them than anything else.

But she liked this look. She liked what it said about her and how she was a rebel from convention, she didn’t put up with crap from governments, if she fell under the jurisdiction of one anyway.

D’Hoffryn liked it. The purple hair, the choker around her neck, the pierced nose. He said that it suited her and her quest to relate to disenchanted children of the world. This was one of the trends of the 1970’s that she could get behind. Disco turned her stomach, punk made more sense. And that’s what she was doing on the streets of New York. She hadn’t wanted to go back to London after Noël died in an IRA bombing. Noël was the last of her family. The last one she had contact with.

Christopher had died an old man surrounded by his family and friends till the end. Except Spike. He wasn’t there for the deathbed vigil, or the funeral. Christopher had even asked for him near the end.
And Buffy tried to get him to come. She sent out demons to find him, wherever he was, to be at their son’s side. She had found out a year later that he had been snacking on frozen Russians in Siberia.

And now Noël was gone too. She hadn’t gone to Noël’s funeral though. She’d been at D’Hoffryn’s annual “How to be a better Vengeance Demon” conference. Spike had gone though.

She would never forget how she found out her beloved great granddaughter had died. She’d found Noël’s house locked up, with a for sale sign in the garden. She’d had to ask the neighbour why the house had been put up for sale. Noël’s neighbour had given her a card too, a business card of Wolfram and Hart, with whom the arrangements for the funeral had been made.

She’d teleported into the lobby of the massive London edifice wanting answers. The receptionist was very kind in light of the fact that the famed Erixel had just teleported into her office. With a little time Buffy learned that Spike had taken care of everything. He’d been there for Noël when she hadn’t been available.

It was her deepest wish now to be able to find out where the rest of her family was hidden. Christopher had had 3 children. Noël’s father, William, had been killed in the war, Noël being his only child. But Henry and Isabella had disappeared. Well, not disappeared, hidden away. Christopher had known where they had gone, fled England before the war, hiding from the Immortal and the demon world. They could be anywhere. They could be dead, but Buffy didn’t want to think about that.

She’d tried to keep in touch with the Wyndham-Price children too, but after Reagan died, the children, raised to believe in the ideals of the Watcher’s council, were fearful of her.

Buffy looked around her for a moment thinking about teleporting to her apartment in Manhattan that she had acquired. She’d had it since the 1950’s from a girl, who’d been on her deathbed that she’d granted a wish to. It was nice of her really. Suddenly, around the corner came an older man, whose demeanour and dress just screamed ’Watcher’ to her, clutching the hand of a little African American boy.

The little boy’s eyes just pleaded with hers. With a smile Buffy decided from whom her next wish was going to come from.
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tbc...