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Who the hell are you? Buffy demanded.
Bitch! Spike thought.
Here he was, her fucking hero... and okay, what he did to her sits uneasy, like a stack of plates that might at any moment topple, leaving shards everywhere to cut the soft parts, but this...? This was just too much!
"I haven't fucking been gone that long!"
She blinked. "I have no idea who you are! And if you don't want to lose those fingers? Get. Them. Off. Me."
Spike blinked. "But you're Buffy. You smell like her... look like her. And you're a bitch, so that's my Buffy... OW!"
He rubbed his cheek and backed off. "Can hit like her too!"
"How 'bout this? You helped me so I don't kill you. Now get out!" She made to sit up, but then whimpered in pain.
"Sit down!"
"No!" She shoved bedding away, he shoved it back. Off, on. Off, on. Until Spike rolled his eyes and sat on her legs.
"This is even more farcical then the sex, pet."
"Sex?" Her forehead crinkled and she gave him that disgusted look he loved. Why he loved it, he had no fucking idea, but he must get off on being unloved, given his history with Angelus, Dru, and now this bitch he loved.
"I'm being sensitive and not smacking you like I want to, so cut it!"
She didn't look impressed.
"Haven't asked you who knocked you up, have I, or who do I hunt down and kill? Could go on about Riley--"
"You know Riley?" Her beautiful eyes widened and studied him as if fascinated. As if he were a mystery, when it was plain to anyone with sense that he was ordinary Spike and she was flying a few feathers short.
"Yeeeeah. Soldier boy come back long enough to leave something domestic in the nest?" He hissed out the last word, remembering how Riley had humiliated him and she'd gone along with it.
"I... I don't... Nest?"
"OUCH! Why do you keep picking on me? I'm only trying to get the story!"
"You're... crude!"
"Well, someone diddled you, didn't they? Just don't tell me it was Angel. I know he took your cherry, but his soldiers have to be as dead as he is!"
...
"You know Angel?" The crease was back. Spike wanted to caress it away. Wanted to be tender with her. Dark circles under her eyes and her hands over her belly as if to keep inside of it the child she carried... but he knew better then to try. Buffy was an even worse bitch when she was hurting. Likely to smack a bloke down for daring to touch any wounds she was nursing...
Spike rolled his eyes. "Yesss. Tell me, pet. How many fingers am I holding up?"
She swatted him for the one he used. Seemed she at least remembered that much about sign language.
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"Man, how do you walk this far every day?" Oz collapsed on his ass, wiping his forehead. Xander stayed on his feet, chewing on some dried meat he handed Oz, but his brown eye scanned the horizon and his very alertness spooked Oz a little.
"Used to it, I guess." Xander shrugged it off.
"One thing about being a sex slave, they kept me in a cage. Not a lot of walking."
"Don't even try to make a joke about it, Oz, okay?" Xander turned away.
"Um, okay, I kind of have to do that. I don't know how else to deal with what happened to me. I mean, when we get back I could lie and say I ran off to the circus, but I'm thinking that won't wash."
Xander sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm no one's therapist. I just... don't know how to react."
"To what?"
"To what happened to you... which I still don't know and I'm frankly not sure I want to."
"Daily rape and humiliation and wanting to kill myself pretty much skims the highlights. Plus? My hands shake sometimes until I remind myself over and over that I'm... safe. Only my body doesn't seem to get that yet."
"I wonder why they kept you alive that long?" Xander gave Oz a sharp look. "Most humans they sell to the demon slave markets and they have a short shelf life."
Oz looked away and swallowed. "They really liked me, I guess."
Xander frowned, sensing for the first time that Oz was holding something back, but before he could push, the slighter boy stood. He was wearing a dish towel around his head to keep the sun from taking too much moisture away and the blanket was cut up and wrapped around him like a rough kilt, pinned over one boney hip, which still bore faint bruises. The blanket was a waste anyway, because it had a big melted hole in the middle from Xander using it the other night to douse their fire.
"I really want to just... shut down, but the only way to get back to your cave is to keep walking, I'm thinking," Oz said.
Xander nodded, letting the smaller boy walk ahead, but as he did, Xander studied him from behind. There was something up with Oz, he could feel it, and Xander didn't like mysteries. Bit you in the ass at exactly the worst moment.
He'd be watching Oz.
.........
She fell asleep like a child, almost mid argument.
Spike sighed, aching and pissed off.
What he wanted was to fight with her until she made everything clear again. This world was so strange, and Buffy... was her hair longer then it had been the last time he'd seen her? It had been short and sassy then, but now it looked a bit like that first year she'd been in college...
How could she not know who he was?
He rubbed his forehead, staring at her from across the room, nursing resentment and hurt feelings and the screaming need to possess he had clamped down in a forbidden jar.
His Artemis, she was.
Excepting she was knocked up.
Who had gotten close enough to manage that?
........
She woke up just as fast as she fell asleep. Blinked at him where he sat in the shadows, watching her.
"My baby?" In her eyes he saw brief panic and vulnerability followed by that aloneness that always made him want to smash something to get to her. Just... get to her.
"Fine, pet."
"I dreamed I lost her."
"Her?"
"In my dreams it's a little girl."
"That's..." He cleared his throat. "Very sweet."
She smiled, her lips still the same color almost as her skin. "You don't actually mean that... uh, do you have a name?"
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