Thanks go to my betas, Holly and dawn, and to all those reading this fic. Your support has really helped me stay excited about writing this fic. Thank you all. Hope you enjoy what is yet to come.
Part Five
Spike had a daughter.
Dawn was Spike’s daughter.
Her sister was Spike’s daughter.
Buffy could admit it; she was struggling. Really, really struggling with this revelation. It kind of made sense, though, or at the very least it explained some things. Now she understood why he was fighting for their side; he had a living, breathing daughter to protect. One he apparently wasn’t snacking on.
“Were those monks completely high?” She couldn’t help it. What kind of sane, religious being gave a mystical key made human into the caring hands of a vampire? “I mean, they had to be nuttier than a Snickers bar.”
Spike’s jaw clenched in outrage, his hands forming fists. Fortunately for Buffy, he stood still and just glared at her. “We’ve dealt with the realities of this situation and don’t need some little upstart from some place else to waltz in and tell us the go of things. You’d be wise to shut your trap.” Done with her, he turned to Dawn and grabbed her arm. “Time for us to be getting home.” He led her to the door, right through her objections, and then they were gone, leaving Buffy with Giles and an awkwardness she rarely felt in her watcher’s presence.
If she didn’t know any better she’d think he’d dismissed her as well, allowing him to go back to his musty old book and the bottled reason behind his physical demise. It was just as well Buffy had learned to be less sensitive to the cold shoulder.
“So, that must have thrown you all for a loop.”
Giles looked up, his expression uncomprehending. “Pardon me?”
“Spike showing up with a daughter. One that required real food instead of blood.” She paused for just a fraction, just long enough to see Giles’s lips start to move. “So, who is she?”
“Who is who?” he spluttered, absently latching a finger around the tea cup handle and bringing it to his lips. An excellent stalling effort, Buffy mused.
“Dawn’s mother. Her father is a vampire so I’m assuming her mother must be human?”
“Oh.” His eyes went round as saucers and he quickly seized a sip from the delicate china cup. “No one you, er, would know.” Indicating the dismissal of the subject, he delved deeply into his book, face close to the pages as if shutting her out of his sight would get rid of the topic completely. Lucky for Buffy she knew Giles’s every move. And she knew that pushing beyond his boundaries might earn her a tsk of impatience but it would also reward her with information.
“Someone I have never known or someone I’m unlikely to know because I’m from a different world? Because you’d be surprised at how many people I know, from Spike’s present and his past.”
With a burst of impatience, Giles snatched the glasses from his face and glared at her, even though Buffy could see that he wished with all he was that she was his own slayer. “Who Dawn’s mother might be is completely irrelevant. As I am sure you are aware, she was made by monks from mystical energy, so whatever story was behind her existence is completely fabricated.”
“So what you’re saying is, one day you’ll tell me the truth about Dawn’s parentage, but not right now?”
“That is exactly what I am saying,” Giles confirmed, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips.
“Great. So, whatcha reading?” She made a half-hearted attempt to look at the book’s browned pages, but made sense of nothing before she managed to snag a chair and sit down.
“Nothing in particular. I made a promise to myself that I would read every book in my possession, and many more that were not, in order to find my Buffy. This is tonight’s effort. I’ve borrowed it from Wesley, in spite of my better judgement. Perhaps we should discuss how it is you’ve come to be here and work on getting you back?”
For one breathless minute, Buffy didn’t want to go back. Something bad was happening in the place she’d come from, and that was also now a world without Spike. Not a brash, insolent Spike who did the right thing to protect his human daughter—forced to just like her Spike had been because of a chip in his brain. A Spike that loved her with all his heart—with all his soul. And one she will never be able to forgive herself for dusting, even though she knew deep down that it was the wrong response. Buffy couldn’t get it out of her head that she’d just bought into some evil scheme, carrying out their greatest desire by ridding her side of Spike. They’d been manipulated, and she’d given them the upper hand. No, it wasn’t a fleeting thought that made her not want to go back. It was a gut wrenching certainty that she had very little to go back for. Whatever it was that would greet her if she got back there, it could take Spike’s and Angelus’s face with barely a shimmer, spreading the pain with every personal trait it employed.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said, even though Buffy knew it was a lie. She’d already started by sharing how she’d come to be back in the world.
Giles reached across the table and took her hand in his. His hands were warmed from the tea. “How about we start with the truth?”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“That was her, wasn’t it?” There was one thing of which no one could ever accuse Dawn, and that was stupid. She picked up on subtleties that others wished she’d stay ignorant of, and she could tell this was one of those times. “Well, not her her,” she compounded, causing herself to cringe when she saw Spike’s jaw clench tight enough to crack his fangs. “But you know, our dimension her if she was here and that her was back in her dimension. See?”
“No, I don’t bloody see,” Spike confided. “Nothing in that sentence made one lick of sense, Bit.”
She sighed, the weight of the world on her shoulders. “My mother is Buffy Summers.”
The statement was so bold that Spike nearly hyperventilated.
“Who told you that?”
“Oh come on, Dad. Before we found out the Monks made me out of a fancy ball of lightning, you and Uncle Giles were searching high and low for her. There is no way you would have put so much energy into searching for a slayer unless she meant something to you. And besides, obviously I was right because right now, you didn’t deny it.”
She was so smug only because she’d been a good student. Her teacher wasn’t likely to win best father in the world, particularly as he had large quantities of blood on his hands, but he was a damn good teacher when the occasion called for it. And he’d taught Dawn to be confident, how to best her peers and beyond, how to win any pissing contest a mere mortal might throw her way, and much more besides. She was the daughter of a vampire and the best slayer in history, and Spike was proud of that fact, even if the monks had fucked with his memories.
He knew Dawn wasn’t really his daughter; he knew he could likely eat her and get the biggest high of his life. While the brain might process the facts, however, the heart knew better. Dawn was his daughter through and through, and she was a part of the Slayer he’d admired so long ago. If that was all any of them could have of her, Spike wasn’t going to lose it. If for the old man’s sake and no one else’s. Though, he was rather fond of the smile Dawn brought to Joyce’s face as well.
“No, don’t suppose I did.” Confirming that Buffy Summers had been the monk’s idea of a mother for Dawn didn’t mean he had to elaborate on the subject. As much as his daughter’s huge, imploring eyes made him waver. The night had taken on an unsavoury turn for the worst with the appearance of the Slayer’s double from another world; Spike was loathe to make it worse. He already felt more than a little off kilter for seeing her again.
“I’d like to spend some time with her,” Dawn said, and Spike stopped dead in his tracks.
“Over my dead body,” he exploded, then cringed while he waited for the obvious taunt to pass his daughter’s lips. When no words came, he groaned at the shit-eating grin that twisted her lips.
It was a marvel to him how easily he’d come to adopt more human emotions. He felt such sadness for Dawn; he understood that every girl would like a relationship with her mum, but this time it just wasn’t possible. Not only was Dawn literally motherless in the way all monk-made girls from balls of energy would be, they had no real idea where the Slayer was. Or if she was still alive.
Spike had had no idea what to do with a baby, and with no Dru on his coat sleeve at the time, his first impulse had strangely been to seek help and answers, rather than having a quick entrée before the nightly main meal. Turning to the slayer would have been a knee-jerk reaction, but with her babe in his arms, smelling so strongly of her scent, he turned instead to her watcher. Between them they’d come to an uneasy agreement. Rupert Giles would help Spike raise a baby—without questioning how Buffy could possibly be the child’s mother—and Spike would help the watcher locate his Chosen One. The old man had been a godsend to Spike and they’d managed to raise Dawn as well as they could, with a lot of grandmotherly love thrown in by the slayer’s mum, Joyce. Spike had struggled to uphold his end of the bargain, however. No matter how far or how wide their search extended, he’d never been able to find her. Had never managed to even lay eyes on her. Not since he’d left her on the losing end of her altercation with Angelus.
“Look, Dawn.” He wished he could make this easier for his girl, but there was nothing to be gained for the teen by hanging around an older, hardened slayer who was no more her mother than…than…well not him as her father because as much as the monks fucked up by giving her to him to raise, he was still as much a father as any other could be. Unlike this dimension hopping Buffy, who at the very most could only give her a sister’s love.
A sister’s love was not enough for Dawn. She’d want more. She deserved more. If only he could have found Buffy…
“Dawn, it isn’t her. She might have the Slayer’s name, the Slayer’s face, and the Slayer’s fine looking ass, but she’s not the Slayer. Not our Slayer. And she never bloody will be.”
Dawn looked far from crushed, for which he was grateful. However, she looked determined, and that was something that made him equally uncomfortable.
“Dad, I know she’s not my mother. I’m never going to meet her,” she admitted, and at last the sadness crept into her voice. “But this is my chance to find out what she might have been like. Grandma Joyce can only tell me so much, you know? And obviously she doesn’t even know who I really am or she’d have told me a lot more. A photo can only tell me what my mother looked like. I want to know what kind of person she was on the inside. This Buffy can help me with that. I have to know how she could give me up.”
Was times like these that made Spike believe that if he could find any of the monks responsible for making him a dad, he’d pop their head right off their shoulders and drink from their brain stem.
“She didn’t give you up, Dawn. Those fucking mongrel monks only made us think she gave you up.” He stood in the street now, feeling riled up and ready to test this newfound commitment to the human race by snapping someone’s neck. Arms crossed, legs spread in a threatening stance, he sometimes forgot that he was totally unable to intimidate his daughter.
“Those monks made me, sure. But I don’t have sparkly ball energy running through my veins. We found out true enough after Glory’s goon cut me up that Grandma Joyce’s blood matches mine. At the time she and I thought that was just lucky. Now I know different. It matched because she’s family—which we are so going to talk about later, that you kept that from me. Buffy’s blood matches mine. She is my mother, as much as you hate to think so.”
Well she had that dead to rights. He hated it as much as he hated Angel’s wide and shiny forehead. As much as he was going to hate the conversation about why he’d never told her about her mother—or informed Joyce that her granddaughter had been part of her life these last five years.
His jaw clenched and Spike fumbled for an answer, a way to end this torture so he could get home and watch his soaps while Dawn got herself off to bed. And then he had it. That age old human response to all things adults wanted to avoid. He turned and started walking again, tossing all he was willing to give her over his shoulder.
“I’ll think about it.”
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