Spike drives her home from the clinic. She doesn’t know how he’d obtained a car and she’s positive he doesn’t have a valid license, but she’s grateful anyway for the silence and privacy of the vehicle, the way that she can stare out the window at the mundane, familiar streets of San Francisco, without words for the first time since this disaster began.
She doesn’t want to mourn, not like they’d said she might. She doesn’t want to cry (maybe a little, at the emotional toll of the past couple of weeks), exactly. She’s just…numb.
Do I tell Xander and Dawn? I haven’t even... What would they say? What would Willow? …Giles? What would they think of me now?
“I made the right decision, right?” she murmurs, noticing for the first time that her hand is clutched in Spike’s. “I’m not normal. I’m not meant for normal. I had to…”
He pulls over down the block from her apartment. “This wasn’t what you wanted, yeah? You chose the world.”
“I chose the world,” she repeats, and his lips close over hers.
--
It’s so strange, looking down at this tiny, wrinkled little thing and knowing that it was inside her not a day ago. She feels removed from it all, feels…
Feels useless, as the baby cries and cries and only the nurses can calm her down. As even Spike manages to soothe her and Dawn makes her eyes open wide for a moment. And Buffy only seems to look at her and she immediately starts screaming in that odd squeal that Buffy’s coming to hate.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers, huddling closer to Spike. The hospital staff has been calling him Daddy, and she has no desire to correct them, not when he’s putting his arms around her and murmuring soothing words like he would to the baby, brushing kisses into her hair and promising that he’ll be there for her.
When he’s here, she almost thinks that she might be okay at this parenting gig. (Well, she thinks “they,” but she hasn’t admitted that to Spike just yet.)
--
“What the hell?” The doctor is murmuring, but it’s loud enough for both of them to hear, and he flushes. “I’m sorry. But the baby’s face on the ultrasound…the bone structure looks almost ridged, the teeth elongated…”
“Bloody hell, you’re having the Antichrist,” Spike says from the other side of her.
She turns to glare at him. “No, you idiot, the baby’s half-vampire. A hamper, or whatever Dawn was trying to tell me before we left.”
“Dhampyr,” he corrects automatically, his eyes settling on her face with slow realization. “Half-vampire? I didn’t realize that-“
Her eyes widen. “You didn’t realize that it was from when we…? What, did you just think I slept around until I got knocked up?” A second notion occurs to her, one that staggers her on the spot. “So… midnight cravings, doctor’s appointments, helping me home whenever the nausea got to be too much on patrol… you’ve been this supportive for the past two months without knowing that the baby was yours?”
They stare at each other for a moment, a moment so lengthy that the doctor says hastily, “I’ll be just outside” and exits, and then she grabs him by the lapels of his duster and pulls him to her.
--
She’s still huddled under his duster, her single arm hidden beneath and her thoughts rough and turmoiled. Spike is the only one left now, the only one she hasn’t sent off- god, she hates the pity on their faces, the quiet compassion that speaks ugly words to her that they don’t mean to say- and she remains facing the wall, eyes unfocused and blank.
When she finally speaks, it’s so quiet that only the vampire she knows is still behind her can hear. “I’m maimed.”
There’s a pause, a strangled breath. “Buffy.”
“I’m never going to be myself again. Not with Andrew’s fucking bionic arm, not ever. I’m weak and I’m nothing and I don’t have an arm! Useless!” The fury bubbles up to dangerous proportions, and then she’s falling apart nearly as rapidly. “So why do I still care about losing some goddamned cells in my uterus that I never really wanted in the first place?” And then she’s crying for the first time since, hating the helplessness and aloneness, and nothing Spike can say or do is ever going to make it okay.
--
She sees the baby once before he’s given to his adoptive parents, soft and fragile and tiny, latched to her breast like she’s the only thing that matters. It’s frightening, now that he’s out, now that he’s real, how much she wants him suddenly, sacred duty and dangerous life be damned. All her careful reasons, all the forms she’s signed, they all seem moot in the face of this tiny infant who needs her, whom she loves without cause or reason.
She opens her mouth to say- something, she doesn’t know what- and shuts it again in preemptive defeat. She can’t. She can’t condemn a child to her life, can’t condemn the world for her child, even as the ache of her decision burns her.
The nurse understands immediately. “I’ll go get your husband,” she says gently, and Buffy doesn’t correct her, because Spike’s the closest she’ll probably ever get to a husband, and that doesn’t bother her as much as it once did.
He holds her silently as the baby is taken from her and put in a bassinet- as her last touch ghosts over the child she’d carried for ninth months- and as he’s wheeled out of the room, they watch together.
************
She shakes her head. “No. No, that’s impossible. The test was-“
“Positive?” the doctor finishes. “Yes, it happens from time to time. A temporary slight hormonal imbalance isn’t unusual, and when it’s in conjunction with a pregnancy test, the results can be misleading.”
She stands unsteadily. “But I’d thought about it! I’d decided that I wanted it, I’d decided to keep it…” She shakes her head. “After all that…?”
“I didn’t see any reason why you and your boyfriend couldn’t try again.” The doctor’s voice is kind, and she knows that he doesn’t understand, but she can’t stop the helpless rage that makes her twist around and smash her fist against the examining chair with full slayer strength.
A pale hand catches hers before she can do any damage, and she startles. She’d forgotten that Spike had been there with her, all along, and now she stares at him with furious despair. “I wanted it!” she repeats wildly, and that fact seems more important than anything else that’s happened in this room today.
Spike’s hand moves to close tentatively around her wrist. “I know, love. I know.” And in a bold action, he leans over to press his lips to her forehead in a cool kiss. It’s oddly soothing, and she’s suddenly fighting tears. “Let’s go home.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Triggery for various pregnancy-related issues.