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thanks for all the great reviews
Spike started laughing, roaring with it, until he winced as the broken rib dug into his side.

‘More blood I think,’ Merrick said, slipping out of the room to allow Joyce to talk to the young man in privacy.

‘You have always loved her, Spike. It shows in everything you do and say when she is around.’

‘I’ve always loved her Joyce, yes, but it was never reciprocated, it was no mutual thing. I was useful, convenient - but she never loved me.’

‘If you think that you’re a bigger idiot than that hair-gelled freak who was always hanging around.’ Joyce grumbled. Spike grinned at the description of his grand sire.

‘The poofter was over gelled wasn’t he; but she didn’t really love ME, Joyce. I was just handy.’

‘No Spike you weren’t just handy! She loved you, more than you could ever know, but she was frightened by the depths of her feelings. Everyone who she had ever loved abandoned her: that idiot, her father…me…’

‘You didn’t abandon her Joyce, you died. It’s not the same thing.’

‘I threw her out of her home, and left her to find her own way in a world full of monsters. And I won’t even talk about how stupid I was over Ted: she warned me he was abusive, but did I listen, no… well now I have a chance to help put things right. You she loved, totally, completely, she loved the gentle loving poet who made her feel like she was the only woman in the world, and she loved the demon who challenged her to be better and she loved the warrior who fought at her side and had her back. She needs you, Spike. Her soul needs you, you complete her totally, you are her equal, the other half of her.’

Spike looked at Joyce and started laughing again. He wondered how the First had managed to be corporeal: he could touch this version, but there was no way he was Buffy’s soul mate. Joyce had got it wrong.

‘I am not the First, Spike, what do I need to do to prove it to you?’ Joyce could see the emotions running across the young man’s face, they were so easy to read.

‘You could let him bite you Joyce,’ the strange looking man said as he came back into the room with another mug of blood.

‘What?’ Spike looked horrified, ‘bite Joyce?’

‘Well if that’s what it takes, ‘she said, clearing the hair from her neck and offering it up to the vampire. Spike looked at the two people in front of him: they were serious.

‘Go on William, don’t hang about all day, I don’t know how much longer I can be this brave.’

Spike leant forward and slipped into game face, scenting the air to find the trick, but there was none. As soon as his fangs broke the woman’s skin he could taste the familiar Summers’ taste: this was Joyce. He quickly withdrew and licked the wound, closing it with his saliva.
‘I believe you,’ he said gently, ‘you are Joyce, you have her scent, and her blood, but why no heartbeat?’

‘Cause I am dead, but the powers knew that my blood would help you heal almost as quickly as my daughter’s did, so we were prepared.’

Merrick passed him another cup of blood and looked at the blond man sitting on the bed. ‘Will you do it? You are her true love, you know.’

‘Me, her true love, don’t be daft! I’m a V_A_M_P_I_R_E, she’s the slayer, well a slayer, but the best there’s ever been; anyway, vampires shoot blanks.’

‘The slayer again,’ Merrick said quietly. ‘All the potentials are back to being that, potentials, the energy needed to power them came from Buffy through that scythe, and Faith is pregnant and refusing to patrol.’

‘And quite rightly,’ Joyce added harshly, ‘she has every reason to refuse, and they mustn’t be allowed to pressure her into doing it, not like poor Buffy. And who told you vampires can’t have children? There have been lots of cases; female vampires have problems, but males are quite capable of fathering a child - provided they don’t eat the mother first,’ she added with a grin.

‘Buffy? What about Buffy?’ Spike asked, leaning over to reach for the jeans at the end of his bed. He lifted them high and waved them at Joyce who turned her back before he threw off the sheet and shucked on the denims; being naked, even if covered with a sheet was no way to hold a serious conversation. Joyce smiled as the vampire pulled on a black tee and continued to button up his jeans. Her daughter was a lucky lady. The movements he was undertaking showed off his muscles quite marvellously.

‘The powers gave her a child of your blood, William,’ she said quietly, the pain obvious in her voice as she turned back to face him again, ‘and she lost it when she was out patrolling, a patrol she should never have done.’

Spike felt the pain hit him hard. Buffy pregnant with his child and forced to carry on patrolling: the scent of her would have brought every nasty there was out of the woodwork, all gunning for her. And the thought of any woman being forced to fight for her life when pregnant was sickening.

‘That’s worse than Angel would have pulled, whose bright idea was it?’ he snorted. His poor Buffy! Spike felt his heart aching for the woman who owned his soul.

‘Giles thought it for the best,’ Joyce said.

‘So what do I have to do?’

‘Go to London, go to her room and play the handsome prince.’ Merrick smiled. ‘Kiss the princess, amongst other things, and wake her up in good old fashioned once upon a time style.’

Spike looked carefully at the two people in front of him. He tried to smell a lie, smell falsehood, but all he could smell was blood from the now empty mug, and worry rolling off both the beings in front of him.

‘Joyce, do you know what you’re asking me to do?’ He looked at the woman who had become a second mother to him.

‘Yes I do know, William, but she’s trapped in that room, and will be for all eternity, unless you free her.’

‘Why me, mum? There must be a hundred blokes that fit the description better than a vampire.’

‘It has to be Buffy’s true love, the man she has given her heart and soul to, and that’s you.’

‘Nah, then you need peaches, he was always her true love, should get him to come and shag her. He’d never notice if she was unconscious.’

Joyce gave him a filthy look. ‘William!!’ She snapped, ‘watch your language, and it’s you she loves, it always has been, she told you she did and it broke her heart that you didn’t believe her!’

‘I did it for the best Joyce,’ he said softly, ‘I honestly thought she should just get on with her life. Forget me.’

‘Everybody did it for the best, but no-one thought to ask her what she wanted. She could never forget you, you held her heart in her hand; now go and get my baby back.’

‘Yes mum.’ Spike got up and picked up his coat, ‘Uh, how do I get there?’ he asked.

Merrick waved his hand and Spike found himself standing outside a wooden door in an apartment somewhere. The gem of Amara dropped at his feet with a tinkling sound.

‘Just in case any of the Scoobies get any stupid ideas,’ a disembodied voice said. Spike bent down and slipped it onto his hand and looked at the ring. It had been years since he’d seen it and it felt good to have it back on his hand. He looked again at the doorway in front of him and hoped he was at the right place. He would just have to trust Joyce and Merrick.

Dawn’s high-pitched scream told William he was indeed at Buffy’s home.


Chapter End Notes:
well? still enjoying???



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