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Everything hurt. More than the pain produced by bloodlust when he'd first risen from his own grave.

But Spike still had his pride. He couldn't bear to be seen like this, chest heaving, showing more signs of life than it ever had since actually breathing over a century ago; the wounds on his face stinging as salty tears poured down it.

He was drinking from the fourth bottle of bourbon he'd nicked, his legs barely keeping up with him as he stumbled into his crypt. For a moment he felt absolutely mad, the scent of her invading his senses.

As if she was still here on this earth.

He stopped crying then, the mausoleum quiet aside from the sound of the glass clinking against the stone lid of the crypt occupying the center of the small, cold room as he put the bottle down. His chest tightened with terror and anxiety when the scent didn't wane. Spike's feet, still feeling disconnected from the rest of his body, made their way through the trap door and underground, where the smell of her grew stronger. It maddened him further when the sound of a quick heartbeat filled his sensitive ears.

Spike felt as though he'd been doused with ice water when he found something waiting for him in the middle of the bed. The small bundle was swaddled in plain linens, its pouting lips suckling at the air. The vampire's feet moved closer of their own accord, taking in the infant's long, black eyelashes and equally dark dusting of hair on its crown.

Its scent was very nearly Buffy's.

But what confused him further was he could smell him on the child, too.

The infant weighed nothing, Spike thought in wonder, as he lifted the precious child off the bed. Underneath the swaddled baby was a pastel pink paper the size and thickness of a postcard. He tucked the baby into one arm and plucked the paper from the bare mattress.

“A gift, for one who deserves,” Spike read softly, his gaze flickering over the lettering of whose penmanship he couldn't recognize.

And then, again, he burst into tears. But instead of the anger and pain that flooded him before, a healing joy washed over him, cleansed him, and filled him with life.

The sounds of his gasps woke the infant in his arms, who quietly stared out at him through crystal blue eyes that mirrored his own. He bent down to press his lips to the small child's forehead. “You're just a little person, there, aren't you,” he whispered, his voice still choked with tears—and now—now, with something else.

Wonderment.





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