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Author's Chapter Notes:
Previously: Spike and Buffy find out there's a plot twist and are now faced with their dopplegangers' daughter.

Beta'd by the ever lovely All4Spike.
Chapter 6

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said before the Slayer could start flailing around like a headless chicken. Any minute now her eyes would pop out of her sockets. Now, wouldn’t that be a laugh?

The girl barreled into him, wrapped herself around his leg with enough force to make it go numb, had he had any blood flow. “I love you. Can you tuck me in again?”

She was the Slayer’s daughter all right, with those heart-shaped lips and big doe eyes—so blue, so much like yours too—only using words instead of weapons to stab him where it hurt the most.

“I—” He met the Slayer’s eyes, helplessly, wordlessly begging her to do something, mouthing the words, ‘get her off me’ without a sound.

“Come on, I-I’ll tuck you in.”

He watched them walk off before collapsing into one of the armchairs, head tilted back, eyes closed, wondering if he could run without the Slayer noticing and hunting him down to chop off his balls.

He didn’t know whether he’d drifted off or if he’d just been so lost in his own disjointed thoughts that he’d missed the sound of footsteps padding towards him. And so the brief touch of her hand on his shoulder was as effective as being poked with a cattle prod, and he should know. Drusilla had always had a weakness for making it hurt.

“We need to talk.”

He rubbed one hand heavy with exhaustion over his face. “She asleep?”

“I think so. I’m pretty sure.” She cast a lingering glance over her shoulder, towards the closed door, and he wondered if it was deliberate or of it was an effort to avoid looking at him. “Maybe we should go upstairs, just to be sure.”

Upstairs in the loft, with the strange mosaic of a life the two of them had never shared, clothes folded next to each other on the shelves in a domestic intimacy he couldn’t stomach. If he wasn’t careful, this place could start messing with his head, make him think thoughts that were better off drowned at the bottom of a glass of Scotch.

He climbed up after her, the bedside light casting shadows across the room. They faced each other over the still unmade bed, gazes flitting around the room before finally colliding.

“What do we do?” she said quietly, arms folding over her middle. And maybe this shouldn’t have thrown him, but it did. Seeing her like this, worried, the mask of the warrior having washed off, taking biting wit and stubborn pride with it. For the space of those four words she was laid bare, right down to the marrow of her bones.

He dropped his gaze. “Your guess is as good as mine. She’s…”

“She looks like us. It’s—”

“Bloody weird?”

“That and more. It’s freaky, and wrong.” She ran a hand through her hair, her gaze catching on the opened half-unpacked suitcase next to the bedside table. “Oh God, what do we do? We’re… she’s our daughter! Well… not our, but you know what I mean. And we can’t just… we can’t just leave her here. She’s a child.”

He leaned his back against the closed mahogany wardrobe, hands buried in the pockets of his coat. “It’s not forever.”

“Forever? Why would you even—”

There was no point in jumping in and pulling her off the edge of the cliff and make her see the reason, tell her this isn’t so bad, we’ll figure it out and we won’t even notice anything’s changed. It was already too late to stop her from falling right into panic mode. It was right there written plainly on her face, with her gaze growing distant and feet wearing tracks into the wooden floor.

“What if we can’t… we don’t know how we got here in the first place and I don’t know how to fix this!” Her eyes searched the room, as if wildly looking for clues etched into the walls, for someone to fight. He wasn’t stupid enough to turn himself into a sacrificial lamb. One thing he’d learned about women; better stay off to the side and do his best impression of an inanimate object and let them rant until they no longer had any energy to punch you in the throat, especially when they had the power to crush your windpipe.

“I’m… I suck at this. This isn’t a battle, not an apocalypse I can figure out how to stop. I’m good at those. I’m not good at this… people stuff. And I used to be.” The words came off mumbled, aimed at an invisible audience. He wondered if she’d stop and clam up once her brain kicked in, told her this is your enemy you’re letting inside your head.

“I used to be a cheerleader, you know? Before, I mean. I had so many friends and I always knew what to do when someone needed dating advice, o-or anything. I used to know how to talk to people and just be a… a person. I just… what’s happened to me? When has it become so hard to just, to just be human?”

She was looking at him now as if expecting him to have all the answers and all he could do was bite back all the innuendo featuring bouncing around in short skirts and waving pom-poms. “Not exactly human myself,” he finally said because he’d never been too good at keeping silent and maybe he’d prefer a crushed windpipe over a heart-to-heart. “Don’t know why you’d want to be that again either. Sounds—”

“Flaky? Shallow? Naïve?” She laughed like a maniac, bent over at the middle. “Yeah. You have no idea.” There was still a smile twisting her mouth but it didn’t reach her eyes, if it had in the first place. “It’s stupid and useless and I wouldn’t even want to be back there again, not really, but… sometimes I miss not having blood on my good shirts or not having to make all the hard decisions that could cost people their lives.”

And maybe there was a twist of something else in his gut when she turned her back on him again, lost inside herself, and he wanted to pick up the bloody lamp and smash it against the wall over her head because he wasn’t supposed to give a fuck about her feelings or indulge in anything other than contempt and vicious glee over her just losing it..

“And now this,” she said, sweeping her arm around. “How am I supposed to deal with this? I d-don’t know how to take care of anyone! Of… little girls with breakable bones. Oh God, I’m going to break her, aren’t I?”

“Stop it,” he said, moving towards her, his hand shaking in anger as he laid it on her shoulder. He didn’t even know who he was angry at anymore. Her or himself, or at being dumped in the middle of this ridiculous situation that would pull out hidden parts of them like loose threads. “We will deal. There’s no other choice. How hard can it be anyway? We feed her and… well, that’s as far as I’ve thought about this.”

“We’re doomed.” She turned around then and she was too close and even though there was space around them he felt as if he’d been trapped in a fish bowl. He couldn’t escape her if he tried. “What do we… Do we tell her? That we’re not really her parents?”

“Yeah, can imagine that going just swimmingly. She’ll be up and running off like her little feet are on fire.”

“Well, what do you suggest then?” He shouldn’t have felt relief when a spark of anger in her voice chased off the helplessness, when those tightly drawn shoulders uncoiled bit by bit, but he did.

“We’ll play it by ear. We just won’t say anything.” He tried not to think about what it meant. This charade, playing the part of being a part of a happy little family. “How old is she anyway? Four? How hard can it be to fool a kid?”

*******

It had been five minutes and everything was unraveling already. Right from the moment he’d woken up, disoriented, half of him fitted on the too short sofa with his legs slung over the armrest, stirred awake by an insistent finger poking his cheek as if he was a bloody pin cushion. Then there had been big blue eyes blinking down at him, little chin quivering as she asked about the Christmas tree, and why aren’t there any presents and is it because Santa thinks I’ve been naughty?

And now the Slayer was climbing down the ladder as he stood there in the middle of the living room with a crying child hugging his leg because he sure as hell wasn’t about to pick her up and get snot all over his tee.

“What’s going on?” she hissed when she was close enough, dark circles under her eyes telling him she’d slept about as well as he had.

“S-Santa… hates me!” the little mite said, last syllable drawn out in a loud wail.

“That’s not true,” he said, trying to salvage the situation and mostly get her to shut up and stop bawling because his jeans were starting to get damp. “The bastard doesn’t even ex—”

The Slayer slapped her hand over his open mouth, looking equally mad and disgusted, probably at having his spit on her skin for the second time in two days. “What he was trying to say is that… Santa’s just—”

“Late!” he blurted out. “The poor sod’s got so many places to be, you know. He’s just taking his time, probably getting sloshed right off his face on eggnog in between.”

“What’s sloshed mean?”

“Right!” Buffy clapped her hands, a scary grin on her face. And he should know scary, being the thing that haunted people’s nightmares. “He’s just… having trouble… finding us.”

“Yeah, like the Sl—” She shot him a warning look. “Buffy says. The cabin’s all hidden by the trees and snow and what not. ‘S just a bit of a delay.”

The girl sniffed, playing with the laces of his boots. He’d been so knackered he hadn’t even bothered taking them off. “But what if he can’t find us?”

“He will,” the Slayer said with an expression he’d seen before, during the time they’d tied him to Rupert’s chair and he’d been forced to watch her cook a Thanksgiving meal, so determined to make it work. This was going to end badly.

There better not be any bears this time or I’m hiking it.

The rest of the day wasn’t any better as he was forced to take over cooking duty while the Slayer went out to get a tree on her own. Thank God for his sunlight intolerance, at least. If not for ducking out of manual labour, then for the fact she’d returned with her cheek scratched up, complaining about broken nails and having to snap the tree off with her bare hands and having an empty bird nest fall on top of her head. There was a stray feather sticking out of her hair when she got back, her mouth pulled into a scowl before she dropped the tree in the corner with a huff and disappeared into the bathroom.

And maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if they both hadn’t found out that neither of them could cook worth shit, and so he spent the time rummaging through the cupboards and finally deciding to just put a banana in the kid’s hand, only to have her look at him as if he’d just ran over her puppy.

“What now?” he asked, leaning against the kitchen counter, staring her down. “Eat up.”

“You know I don’t like them.”

“Well, I don’t like pig’s blood but I drink it anyway, don’t I?”

“Eww! No, you don’t.” She pouted and oh, this was familiar. He’d seen it on the Slayer several times when she was trying to emotionally blackmail her mother. Good luck trying it on him. “I’d like a cup of hot chocolate, please.”

“You can have it if you know how to make it yourself.”

“But I’m little!” She looked at the banana somewhat forlornly. “Please, Daddy?”

Daddy. Bloody hell, this felt wrong, even more so than being snogged by Angelus, and that was saying something.

They finally settled on Choco Puffs, her short legs swinging in the air as she slurped up the milk.

“Do you know how obnoxious that is?”

Then she looked up and fucking smirked around her spoonful. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I just bet you are.” He needed to turn around and leave, possibly kill something just so he wouldn’t have to look at her and see all the pieces of him and the Slayer reflected in those eyes, and the tiniest bump in her nose, the slash of cheekbones barely pushing beneath her rounded cheeks, the light brown hair that curled at the ends. There had been many strange moments he’d experienced in his hundred plus years, but this one topped them all.

“Are you even real?” he asked her.

She just giggled and went back to eating her cereal.

*******

She and Spike had set the tree up in a few minutes, having learned quickly from the last, far more disastrous attempt back home. And it was weird, out-of-the-Twilight-Zone weird, but she tried not to think about this being a permanent arrangement. It could have been worse anyway. Spike could have witnessed her mental break-down, seen her eyes well up from frustration, honed in on that weakness and tuck it away for later use. Oh, wait.

“Found them!” he yelled from the loft. She made sure the little girl was still too preoccupied watching cartoons before going up to the loft.

“Found the presents,” he said with a triumphant grin and shook a wrapped box in his hand. “It’s always the top shelf of the closet. There’s more inside.”

“Thank God.”

“Second that.” He tossed the box on the bed. It took her a moment to realise something was off and then she finally pinned it down. Spike was barefoot. He looked shorter, for some reason. Huh. Somehow she’d thought those boots had grown onto him, like a never-changing fixture. Kind of like his hair and the scar on his eyebrow and the trademark coat he wasn’t wearing right now either. It was a bit like seeing Santa in his underwear. “Wait a sec. Found something else,” he said, flipping open a wallet he’d found in the night stand. “There’s stuff here.”

“You’re not stealing their money.”

“Our money, you mean.”

“No, I really don’t.” It had been hard enough to sleep in that bed, definitely not imagining them lying there with lazy limbs all tangled up in the early mornings, all warm skin and wandering hands and… Ew. Definitely perverse. The less she’d be reminded of the relationship between their doppelgangers, the more sanity she’d keep. And she rather liked her sanity.

“Not what I meant anyway.” He pulled out a piece of paper, handed it to her with an unreadable look.

“Oh.” A picture. With an identical looking Buffy wearing a hospital gown, a tired but happy smile on her face as she cradled a newborn in her arms. I’ll never have this. She imagined what her life would have been like if she hadn’t been Called. If perhaps this Buffy had got to fall in love at sixteen without having to sacrifice everything and kill the one person she loved the most, if maybe she hadn’t had to watch her father figure pay the price for her sins and feel all alone even among hundreds of people. She had a life that was all hers, not playing the part of destiny’s martyr or feeling herself hardening on the inside, more like a stone with each passing day.

“Buffy.”

She started at the sound of her name, almost surprised to see Spike was still there, wondering how long she’d been zoning out like a basket case. She hated that he wouldn’t look away and that she couldn’t either. Especially now, when he turned serious, as if a switch had been pulled inside him, or maybe it was her, being lit from the inside out so he could read her every thought as if they were inked on her skin.

Her stomach lurched in that familiar sensation of riding in a too fast elevator when he finally spoke. “Turn it over.”

She did so with numb fingers, not even finding it in herself to tell him to stop bossing her around.

Buffy and Emma, two loves of my life, March 1995

It was there, blue on white in a careful elegant penmanship, the photo already worn out on the edges as if the owner often took it out and smoothed out the corners with careful fingertips.

She caught a glimpse of black-painted fingernails right before another picture landed on top of the one she was already holding. She met Spike’s eyes, saw the almost vindictive set of his jaw and harsh line of his mouth.

It was her and him and it was a stupid snapshot with the other Buffy wearing a too big T-shirt of a band she’d never heard of, laughing as she wiped chocolate on the other Spike’s nose with her index finger. They were both in profile and he wasn’t laughing, but his eyes crinkled at the edges and his lips were pulled up in a smile. But it wasn’t even that. It was the way he was looking at her. As if there was nothing in the world beside her and he looked so desperately fond that Buffy might have gagged if it didn’t make her feel sad instead.

Has anyone ever loved me like this?

And it was bizarre to think that because it was Spike but at the same time it wasn’t him at all. Not the Spike she knew, the brash, careless, reckless Spike who didn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.

And Drusilla.

Not the same. He’s got no soul. He can’t love like this, she told herself but maybe it didn’t fit as well as she’d like it to.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Figured it’s an insight I should share, if nothing more.” His eyes were dark and he looked ready to tip over and do something drastic. She wondered if it was his turn to freak out.

“Guess this means it really is us we swapped places with.”

“A bit hard to counter all the evidence.” He stalked towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to pick her up and throw her over the railing. She wouldn’t put it past him.

“What’s with you and the murdery vibes?” she asked as he snatched the pictures from her hand and stuffed them back into the wallet.

“I’m a vampire, it’s kind of what we do.”

“Oh, really? Because I didn’t know. Thanks for enlightening me.”

He tossed the wallet on the mattress, sucking his cheeks in. “Stop being so glib about it!”

“Okay, were you or were you not here yesterday? What part of my massive freak out seemed glib to you?”

“It’s bloody wrong and… unnatural!” He was getting worked up and maybe he would have looked a bit more intimidating if he wasn’t barefoot. “It wasn’t supposed to be you.”

Saying she was lost was an understatement but she could see it was all simmering beneath his skin ready to explode in a barrage of foreign curse words and yelling, and there was a little girl downstairs Buffy couldn’t help but think of. And maybe she’d finally started to lose her grip on her sanity but she just needed him to stop, so she closed the distance and banded her arms around him in a too tight hold she refused to think of as embrace. More like an arm-prison. Yeah, much better.

“What are you—” He sounded alarmed but wasn’t moving away. Maybe she’d just stunned him motionless.

“You think I want to be here? It’s Christmas, Spike. And I’m here stuck with you. But… we’re stuck with each other, okay? This isn’t the time to fight. I’d like to keep from traumatising her too much.” Even now she still remembered what it was like to listen to her parents fight and just feel so confused and helpless and afraid one of them was finally going to snap and everything would fall apart. “I don’t want her to feel like… let’s just try to keep from fighting and screaming when she can hear. Deal?”

He was still shaking against her, one hand fisted in the fabric of the back of her T-shirt, blunt teeth biting down on her shoulder. “Fuck.”

There were so many kinds of alarms going off in her head it was like the 4th of July, but she held on anyway, and now he was squeezing her back so hard that breathing was becoming a struggle.

They let go at the same moment as if realising in synch how unnatural and wrong and strange it was to be so close without fists meeting flesh. She couldn’t even look at him now, blood rushing to her face and… had her hands just always hung there like that? Where should she put them?

Act casual. You’re the queen of casualness.

She managed to trip over Spike’s discarded boot before rushing down the ladder.

And so her delayed Christmas was spent being deafened by childish squeals and the sounds of wrapping paper being torn by overeager hands, which unfortunately weren’t loud enough to drown out the voice of reason frantically whispering, what the hell did you think you were doing?

Both she and Spike got tackled and hugged rather violently, neither of them quite knowing what to do with themselves. She didn’t know what was more depressing. The fact she had the same amount of skills when it came to interacting with children than someone who had probably spent over a century eating them or that she was stuck with the said someone in a place she couldn’t escape. She decided on the latter when she and Spike started to reluctantly open ‘each other’s’ presents just to avoid Emma’s suspicion, and things got even more awkward when she opened hers only to find sexy lingerie. Crotchless panties included.

They avoided each other like the plague for the rest of the day.

TBC





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