Love feels no burden,
thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility...
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things,
and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed, it is not straitened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded-Thomas A. Kempis
"This? This is where you're living, Slayer?" Spike looked around at the cave Buffy shared with Xander.
"Yeah, so?" She felt shame flush her cheeks as she remembered the pretty cottage she'd been evicted from. Remembered the townspeople chasing Xander into the night with lit torches. She closed her eyes, pushing the specter of that night away like the empty gown of the person she'd once been.
"It's a fuckin' hovel!" Spike kicked her favorite cooking pan.
"Hey!" She reached down and righted it, feeling her weariness and dizziness return.
Spike frowned, seeing her holding her side. "You alright?"
"Yes!" She held out a hand to ward him off if he tried to hold her again. The truth was, a huge part of her wanted him to hold her, wanted to be crushed against cool leather and Spike, her mysterious, brassy peacock of a rescuer, but she couldn't trust anyone but Xan. Everyone else had deserted her or turned away from her shame. "Just keep your distance!"
"Oh, please. You're about as appealing as rotting liver!" he growled.
"I am so much more appealing than...ewwww!" She covered her mouth. "Now you've done it!" She raced for the outside, bending over--
Spike was there seconds later, putting a damp cloth against her forehead as she retched romantically into the shrubbery.
She tensed when he discovered her tears, but all he did was smooth them away under compassionate thumbs.
She didn't let herself shed anymore.
"I'll take a look round. See if I can scrounge up some food for your precious cooking pot."
She knew if she only let him, he'd swing her into his arms like her knight. Carry her inside and put her safely under linen sheets.
Instead, he surprised her, dropping his hands and his gaze.
"Fresh air will do you good. Stay out here while I manage something."
She nodded, accepting this limited service, which was exactly all she could bring herself accept.
When he disappeared inside her cave, she wondered how he knew her limitations so well, as if she were familiar ground and his feet already knew the best path to tread.
...
He brought her soup later. She was sitting looking up at the stars, something everyone did on the Grass. He passed her a bowl of soup and she ate, suddenly hungry with the perversity of her pregnancy.
"What am I to you?" she asked him as she sipped.
He was cleaning his blades, his face heavy as if from the weight of carrying such weapons. It was something she understood.
"You'll think I'm mad," he said.
"Probably."
He laughed, the sound rattling with the unease of disuse.
"I owed a debt for...for hurtin' someone. Payin' it, I got lost. But there was this rock with an...image on it. Called it my Madonna."
"Madonna?" Buffy finished her soup and put down her spoon. "It was a pregnant image?"
Spike cocked his head. "I think maybe she was. I didn't see it because I was looking for my own Artemis. Instead, fortune tossed me at the feet of the knocked-up version. Guess you needed me more than she did, pet."
Buffy rubbed her belly. "It's hard for me to believe it myself, sometimes, and I'm the one with the kid."
"You don't glow, you know, or any of that nonsense."
"Why would I glow?" Buffy frowned. "I don't want to be pregnant. I just am."
"Will you tell me how it happened?" He really wanted to know. Would she let him read some of the closed pages?
"The thing is," she confessed softly, looking up at the stars. "I really don't know what happened. I just woke up...pregnant."
"Oh." He stared at her. "Well, it's happened once, legend has it."
"No, not like that." Her face darkened like a sad and resigned moon goddess. He ached to hold her but there might as well be flames burning between them, warding him off. She was wary and he was unworthy. What a pair they were!
In the celestial whirl above them, clouds breathed past as he waited on her words.
Finally, she said softly, "That night...someone had been with me." She scrubbed her cheek with the back of her hand. "Or...maybe more than one. It kind of looked like...more than one."
"Fucking hell!" Spike sprang to his feet, his fists balled.
...
Xander sprinted over the deforested earth. It had been raining, so the grass and the mud and the remains of trees made a fine mess to navigate. He watched a pair of oxen pulling a six-pounder cannon closer to the stockade under siege. He waited. Finally the demon led it right past him. He leaped on the demon, pulling him down to the mud and smashing down once with his tomahawk.
He snagged the demon's cloak and hat, wiping blood off his chin.
Then he went to work on the cannon.
...
He led the wagon up to the lines, where riflemen picked off any defenders in the stockade they could get a bead on from newly dug trenches. Abandoning it, he worked his way to a fresh team loading ball into their cannon. Spotting the powder mix for the charge on the ground beside the lead demon, he inched closer, reaching into his pocket to sprinkle additional saltpeter onto the mix. Next, he used a dab of tree resin to tack alcohol-soaked twine to the paper with the charge.
He darted over to the next cannon in line, unspooling twine behind him like a spider laying thread. At each cannon, he repeated the same procedure.
At the last cannon, he watched the demons until they began to prepare a load. While they were busy, he bent down and quickly attached the last of the twine, then pulled out some matches to light it--
There was a bellow, and the head cannoneer demon struck back Xander's shielding hat, revealing his humanity. The match fizzed out unborn in his fingers. The demon shouted a warning to the other cannoneer teams.
Before Xander could run, the demon backhanded him, and he crumpled to the ground.
...
Suddenly a figure with moonlit skin and red hair darted into the fray. Oz grabbed the long metal lighter used to ignite the charge and struck Xander's assailant with it before he put it to the paper and lit the charge Xander had fixed, sending a thread of flame toward the next cannon in line.
Xander gaped in shock at the smaller boy.
Oz grabbed Xander's cloak and shoved him into the closest trench. "You stupid--" Oz began.
The ground shook as fire and metal and screams flew through the air above them like fireworks in Hell.
"They're going to be pissed!" Oz yelled. Xander could feel the other boy shaking, and no wonder. He wasn't disguised: any demon could have seen him and enslaved him again. He'd taken a huge risk coming after Xander.
"Let's get out of here!" Xander yelled back over the noise. He was still dizzy from the blow the demon gave him, so it was Oz who guided him to safety, one pale arm still bearing the black bruises of his captivity steadying Xander.
...
"Look, lights over the Grass!" Buffy pointed.
"Bugger me, what is all that?" Spike stared at the shimmering beams of light over the horizon. The colors were brilliant and unearthly, like nothing he'd seen even in his long years.
"I don't know." She shrugged. "Sometimes we just see them. The Grass is on the edge of the world. Maybe that has something to do with it."
"Look a bit like the Northern Lights. The Aurora Borealis where I come from."
"I don't know what they are," Buffy said, her face soft as she watched the display. "They just make me feel better when I see them."
He reached out to take her hand. He saw her track the movement and let his fingers fall before making contact with hers. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. Sorry you had no pleasure in it."
"What I miss most is my cottage. I'd like to take a real bath," she said, avoiding the subject.
"You had a home other than this cave?"
She nodded. "I was driven from it one night."
Spike ground his teeth. "Right. Where's this cottage of yours?"
"On the edge of town...it's not much. I mainly miss my garden, not that I was very good with it, but...so much of what I do is about death. It was nice to plant something that wasn't. Forrest lives there now."
"We'll go there first thing in the morning so I want you to pack your things. You're not carrying a baby and living in a bloody cave!"
"But the townspeople--"
"Need a lesson," Spike snarled.
...
"Oz..." Xander wanted to give the other boy a grateful hug, but Oz was glaring at him. "Uh, are you hungry? I have the fixings for soup."
Oz paced by their tiny fire. "Soup? Yeah, I could eat. Terror makes a fella hungry."
"You shouldn't have come after me. What were you thinking? If they'd caught you--"
"Then I would have been a sex slave again, but I would have survived. I'm very good at...surviving," Oz finished bitterly. "I know how to be kept. How to please my owners."
Xander didn't know how to deal with Oz's raw pain so he made soup out of dried bits he collected as he walked the Grass. Roots, mushrooms, tree bark and dried meat. It didn't taste very good, but it was filling and he was used to it.
"We all do stuff we don't like to get by. Why'd you come after me?"
Oz collapsed next to Xander, watching Xander moodily as he stirred their meal. "Going into that camp and helping you was the most terrifying thing I've ever done...the only thing worse would have been to be alone. You take good care of me, Xander." And he stroked Xander's thigh once, holding his eyes.
Xander was hit by a sudden bloom of sexual need. It had been so long since he'd been touched. But he knew the truth now. "You're not gay, are you? You just told me that because..." He broke off and stopped stirring the soup. "Because you were scared and you heard the story of me and Jesse. So you figured you'd offer yourself to me and I'd take care of you."
Oz swallowed tightly. "Why else would you help me?" he asked simply.
The tiny hope that Xander had held that Oz was actually attracted to him died.
"Because it's the right thing to do, Oz. Because...you're my friend and I would never demand sexual favors to help you."
Oz pulled his hand away. "I don't understand. You can have me. What does it matter if I don't feel anything?"
"It matters to me! Jesse died because kissing me got him killed, but we couldn't stop ourselves. That kind of passion...I hope you find it one day, Oz."
Xander's throat was too tight with tears to eat. He left the soup to Oz and lay down to sleep, wrapped in his cloak.
Finally, Oz timidly curled up next to him, but unlike the other nights since his rescue, he didn't cuddle close to Xander for safety or warmth.
Staring dry eyed at the lights over the Grass, it was a long time before Xander slept.