Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS

A/N:  Thank you to all who have reviewed.  I’m delighted by all your thoughtful commentary and although I don’t personally respond, please know that I do cherish each and every one.

Dawn of a New Age

Chapter Twelve

Buffy could feel Angel outside her house for long minutes as she cried out all her anxiety on the cold linoleum floor.  Long after he was gone, she stayed prone until her cries quieted and her heartbeat returned to normal.  She stared at the cracked baseboards, absently thinking they needed to be cleaned.  It was amazing how much dirt could be found in an otherwise clean home.  How much was swept away under the rugs in order to make things presentable.

Her muscles ached as she pulled herself off the floor.  She slowly plodded up the stairs and into the bath.  As she waited for the water for her shower to heat, she slipped out of her clothes, thinking about the two vampires in her life.

Angel was the love of her life.  She had always believed nothing would change that.  They were Romeo and Juliet, Isolde and Tristan, Persephone and Hades.  Doomed to love eternally, but never to be together.  They were a romantic fairytale.

But things did change.  Nothing ever stays static.  She still loved Angel, but feelings had a way of shifting around, transforming and growing as a person does.  She had once taken what Angel told her on unquestioning faith.  But that was before Angelus.  Before life had taught her rock solid lessens on independence and self-reliance.

She wasn’t all grown up yet.  She was barely nineteen.  And while she’d been forced to mature rapidly, she wasn’t done learning all there was about life.  But she was going to be a mother now.  She may not have all the answers, but it was up to her to try and find them out.  If she took either Angel or Spike at their words, then she was displaying a vast amount of ignorance.  What she needed to do was ask questions and weigh the answers against her own conscience.  She needed to decide for herself what was right for her child. 

She trusted Angel.  And much to her consternation she trusted Spike as well.  She truly didn’t believe Spike would do anything to harm their baby, but Angel managed to plant a small seed of doubt in her heart.  It would be foolish of her to say she knew absolutely how Spike would react if Drusilla came back into the picture, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe he would feed their little girl to her either.

The question of Spike’s chip was something altogether different.  She had no problem believing Spike would go back to his rotten ways if the chip were out.  He had made promises, that for the sake of their child, he would never commit the ‘big evils’, as he called them ever again, but could she really take his word for it?  Not murdering, not feeding went against every natural instinct for a vampire.

Angel had been right on one point.  Spike was amassing power among the demon community.  He had never given her a satisfactory answer as to why.  If the demons were under his control then Spike could go on being evil without ever getting his hands directly dirty.  The Mayor never did any of his own dirty work, but it hadn’t made him any less filthy.  Spike was filling a void in the vacuum of power, but his purposes for doing so were murky.  He could very easily be ordering his demons to kill for him, and with his power it would be simple to hide the bodies.

She needed answers and she needed them now.  She toweled off and stalked to her room to dress in Slayer friendly clothes.

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Spike wasn’t at his apartment.  She hadn’t really expected him to be.  It was early evening, but she was sure his night had already begun.  The problem was that she didn’t know exactly what he did at night.  She knew he was some sort of enforcer, but what did that mean exactly?  Did he just hang out on a street corner, waiting for someone to start causing trouble?  Did he have some sort of secret hangout?

If there were going to be trouble anywhere, the most likely place would be Willy’s.  It was time to visit her favorite snitch.  She did so love the sound of his squeals.

When she entered Willy’s the entire place went deathly quiet.  She wasn’t used to that.  Usually when she barreled in she was treated to death glares and threatening snarls.  Some of the smarter demons would slink out the back, not wanting any trouble.  This time everyone seemed to be frozen into caricatures of themselves.  Their eyes darted around like they didn’t know where to look.  The only thing they seemed to know for certain was that looking at her was of the no.

She tried to hide how thrown off she was by stalking up to Willy.  The weasely little man stared down at his heavily scuffed bar, his body so stiff with fear it was hard to haul him close.

“I’m looking for Spike,” she growled.

His bloodshot eyes darted up to hers before they skittered away.  The shock on his face was apparent.  She supposed it would be shocking that she didn’t know how to find Spike.  After all, everyone from here to L.A. seemed to know her business.  And that business was tied up with Spike at the moment.

“I—uh—I,” the man stuttered.  “Look.  I don’t want no trouble.  Don’t want word getting back to your man that I’m disrespectin’ you.”

Rage may have melted the synaptic responses in her brain.  She certainly didn’t remember pulling the small man over his bar, slamming him onto the floor and pulling back her fist to obliterate his face.

“Oh, God!  Don’t kill me!” he squealed, folding his arms over his face in a panicked attempt to shield his head.

The all out fear in his voice brought her back to her senses, but the rage lingered.  Throbbing hard and hot in her veins.

“Spike is not my man.  He is not my keeper,” she hissed through clenched teeth.  These people.  These demons weren’t afraid of her anymore.  They were afraid of Spike.  She was the goddamn Slayer, and they were treating her like a joke.  Like the little fucking woman.  Oh, God.  She was cussing in her head.  So of the bad.

“I’m the Slayer.  You will tell me what I want to know or I’ll take every one of you apart piece by piece.”  Gawd she wanted to kill them all.  She wanted to reassert herself as the boogeyman of the demon world.  She wanted them to fear her.  Respect her.  Treat her like they did before she became pregnant.  Before her name became tied to Spike’s.

“I’ll take you to him, ma’am.”  Buffy shot a hard glare at the man who spoke.  “Err miss.”  He shuffled nervously.  “Slayer,” he finally settled on.  Why was her identity suddenly in question?  She was the Slayer.  Why did everyone want to devalue her?  Turn her into something else?  Something domestic?  This guy might as well of called her Mrs. Spike.

“I know you.”  She let go of Willy, his skull echoing hollowly on the floor.  Her cool assessing gaze raked over the man.  He had black hair, gray eyes, and absurd taste in leathers.

“Name’s Dekker,” he offered, his gaze respectfully averted. 

“You’re Spike’s guy.”

He nodded, and swept his hand towards the backroom of Willy’s.  She stared at him hard, but he didn’t flinch.  She walked by, keeping her eye on him as she passed.  The backroom was smoky and made her eyes water.  A group of demons ringed a poker table.  The silence would have been deafening if it weren’t for the mewing of kittens.

“This way.”  Dekker pointed.  He showed her through another door that led into the sewers.

She had been in the sewers many times of course, just not recently.  Someone had been doing a bit of maintenance.  The walks were cleared of the usual detritus and lighting had been installed.  It still stunk of sewage, but the difference was glaring.  Even the labyrinthine paths had been laboriously marked out in demon sign, making it easier to navigate the underground.

“You know.  It’s not like we fear you any less.  We fear you more now.”

She glared at the demon walking beside her, but he stared straight ahead.  She couldn’t help the sneer that deformed her lips even though she knew it made her look petty and mean.

“You all fear, Spike,” she spat.

“Well, yes.  But it’s not how you think.”

She stopped in the middle of the walkway, her hands on her hips.  “Why don’t you explain it to the poor, dumb bimbo then?”

He turned to face her, but kept his eyes trained on the toes of her fashionable boots.  There was a long pause as he collected his thoughts.  She watched the crease in his brow become more pronounced as her toe tapped out an irritated tattoo on the aged bricks.

“As the Slayer, you’re a challenge.  A risk worth the reward.  When a demon goes up against you there’s a pretty good chance of dying, but if we win…” he trailed off, scratching his skull where his horn would be if he was in demon form.  “A demon could live off that kind of reputation for a lifetime.  To be the one to take down the Slayer.  That’s balls.”

Buffy huffed, crossing her arms protectively.  She glanced away, not wanting to look at Dekker anymore.  “Yeah.  I get it.  Free drinks for life as long as you tell the story of how you beat the Slayer.  Why has that suddenly changed?”

He shifted, looking away as well.  They stared down opposite ends of the tunnel, looking at everything but each other.  “Before, Spike, you were alone.  Yeah.  You have those humans of yours, but they’re nothing.  Not any kind of threat.  There’d be no payback.”

She turned, frowning at his profile.  “And that’s changed?”

He met her eyes for the first time.  “Yeah.  You have Spike now.”

“I don’t need him to fight my battles,” she hissed.  She expected the passive demon to back away, but to her amazement he seemed to grow.  His gray eyes were steely as he stared her down.

“Spike’s not fightin’ your battles.  No one expects him too.  You’re still the prize.  Still the challenge.  What’s changed is the risk versus the reward.  Now if one of us takes you down, there’ll be Spike to deal with.  There was no risk of payback with your humans.  Not so with Spike.  Every demon around knows that if we hurt you, he’ll hunt us down, no matter how long it takes.  There’ll be no place we’ll be able to hide.  No master that’ll be able to keep us safe.  No matter how long it takes.  No matter who he’d have to go through.  There’s no reward in that.  No rounds of drinks to be bought, cause we’d be too afraid to tell the story.  So you see, Slayer.  You’re not in danger because you aren’t hated and feared anymore, but because you’re loved and cherished.  Because you’re not alone.”

Buffy stared at him stunned.  She didn’t know what to say to his little speech.  Since being Chosen there were certain truths she had accepted as unassailable.  She would fight alone.  She would die alone.  The idea of having a partner to share her life had briefly taken root when she was involved with Angel, but it had died along with her at the Master’s hands.  Over the next two years it had resurrected briefly from time to time, but it never had any strength.  Angel would occasionally fight at her side, but he couldn’t be relied upon.  Not really.  His love for her made him step back and allow her to mature into the fighter she was.  Angel’s love is what taught her the unassailable truths that she fought and died alone. 

Spike’s love was ripping those truths apart.

Did he love her?  He never said as much to her.

“Demons can’t love,” she whispered.  She wasn’t looking at Dekker.  She was focused on her own interiority.  The confused look Dekker flashed pulled her from her thoughts.  He shrugged and started to lead her further along.

She glanced at him, but he was impassive as they walked.  They came to a dead end, sealed by a steel circular door.  Dekker knocks ricocheted along the brick walls.  A tiny door slid open and then closed rapidly.  The large door swung inward on well-oiled hinges, and a deep, gut-thudding beat flooded into the sewer.

Dekker motioned her inside and first thing she saw was an azure neon sign.  Eden was sprawled along the wall.  She rounded the wall and came to a standstill.  She felt as if she had stepped back in time to a lavish, elegant, gentlemen’s club.  The room was paneled in rich mahogany woods, and the carpet was plush red velvet.  The comfortable seating was padded in black leather and the tables were heavy, expensive wood.  The heady beat of the music traveled up from her feet, vibrating her sex.  The room smelled of whiskey, tobacco and unobtainable desire. 

A beautiful, violet-tinged girl sinuously dangled her body from sturdy velvet ropes on center stage.  She writhed and contorted her naked body with awe-inspiring flexibility.  A few customers, male and female sat nearby, watching appreciatively.

“This is a strip club.”  Buffy turned to face Dekker.  “Why would Spike be at a strip club?” she asked neutrally.  In a rare moment of maturity Buffy wanted to make sure she had all the facts before she leveled the building down to its foundations.

Dekker audibly swallowed, and Buffy had to wonder if she wasn’t portraying the neutrality she was striving for.

“Spike owns it.” 

“Spike owns this.”  Buffy didn’t know if she was getting enough air.  They were underground after all.

“Well, yeah.  Bought it and renovated it.  It was a real cesspool before, but he revamped the whole place.  Turns a pretty tidy profit.”

“Spike makes money off this?”

Dekker narrowed his eyes at her.  His gaze swept over her speculatively.  “Yeah,” he said slowly.  Like maybe she wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.  “It’s a business.”

“A business!” she spat.  “He’s exploiting women!”

Dekker took a step back.  He knew a ticking time bomb when he saw one.  “Why don’t I just get you to Spike.”

“Yeah.  You do that.”

Dekker led her along a bar towards a darkened hallway in the back.  At the end of the bar was a cluster of women clearly waiting for the evening’s business to pick up.  Buffy could tell they recognized her by the way they stared as she neared.  The closer she got the more nervous the women became.  Now that Buffy could see them clearly, she could tell they weren’t human.  They had various tones of skin and hair color ranging from dark blue to shades of pink.  The only thing they had in common was their exotic beauty.

As they passed, a statuesque demon with lilac skin so dark it shaded black in some areas stepped in front of them.

“Mrs. Spike,” the woman hailed, and Buffy felt an instant flare of anger.

“I am not Mrs. Spike.  I’m the Slayer,” she hissed.  The women ruffled like a flock of beautifully feathered birds.  Although her unease was clear, the tall demon didn’t back away. 

“I meant no offense.  Please accept my apology.”  The woman pressed her hands together, and gave a tiny bow.

Well, shoot.  Buffy felt like a bitch now.  “There’s no offense.  It’s just---“ Buffy waved her away, unsure what she was going to say.

“You are not the property of a man,” the demon finished for her.  Dekker backed away, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

Another, delicately made demon, cast in shades of pink and cream, finished the other demon’s thought.  “Just because you carry his child, does not make you his.”

“It might make him yours though,” a sexpot of a demon purred from the back.

“Y-you know?”  Gees!  Keeping a secret in this town was impossible.  Her life might as well be in one of those soap mags in the checkout isle of the grocery store.

The dainty demon, who despite clearly not being human, had an essence of homegrown goodness about her.  Buffy could almost imagine her milking cows and seducing cowboys in the hayloft.  She practically effervesced with goodwill, and that made Buffy distinctly uncomfortable.

“Everyone knows, sweetie,” she said.  “We are so happy for you!”  The demon beamed and Buffy honestly didn’t know what to say to her completely genuine offering.  Demons weren’t supposed to be delighted at her impending motherhood.  It was just—wigsome!

“Why?” Buffy asked.

The demons shuffled amongst themselves.  The boldest one who blocked her path spoke.  “You’ve always been good to us docile demons.  You don’t go out of your way to hunt us.  I mean.  You’re the Slayer.  If you wanted to, you could slaughter us all, but you leave us be to live our lives.  You’ve even helped our community a time or two, by getting rid of some really bad elements.  You’re good people and we just want you to be happy.”

Buffy was astounded.  And embarrassed.  She was embarrassed because she didn’t really know what the demon was talking about.  She hadn’t come after these women because she didn’t know about them.  Buffy only concentrated her attention on demons who were attacking the humans.  She never gave a second thought to demons who might be living under her nose who weren’t attacking people.  She was left with the uncomfortable question of whether her knowing about them would have made a difference.  If she knew they existed, would she have hunted them, even if they were harmless?  They were demons after all.  By the very definition that made them evil.  Soulless.  There was no way they couldn’t be hostile.

“I can’t imagine life before my little dumplings,” the delicate demon chirped, her iridescent blue eyes bright in the dim room.

“Y-you have children?” Buffy stuttered.  What a revelation.  She never even considered there were demon children before.  It made sense.  Demons had to come from somewhere, didn’t they?

“You didn’t think we are Autochthons, did you?”  The sexpot from the back purred.  Buffy decided she didn’t like her.  She wasn’t sure she liked any of them.  She felt a twinge of jealousy low in her belly.  They were all so beautiful.  And they worked with Spike.  Every night.  Taking their clothes off.  Revealing their perfect, exotic bodies.

“What?”  Buffy snapped.

The bubbly demon elbowed the sexpot and turned back to Buffy.  “I have four little broodlings.  See.”  She wiggled a photo out of her sequined halter and flashed it proudly.

Buffy’s good manners wouldn’t allow her to dismiss the offer.  The children clustered around their mother in the photo were downright cute.  It was kinda disgusting actually.  Buffy almost couldn’t stop the awww lisping out from between her lips.  Must be hormones.

“They’re adorable,” Buffy said politely.

“Thanks!”  The woman grinned and tucked her family away.

“Anyways,” the bold demon interjected.  “We just wanted to say congratulations and thank-you.  Between you and your man things have gotten a whole lot better around here.”

“He’s not my man!”  Buffy was angry and confused.  She didn’t like the proprietariness everyone was assigning to her and Spike’s relationship.  The women shifted nervously, and Buffy was contrite.  “What exactly has he done?  Besides exploit you,” she added bitterly.

Buffy subconsciously looked down at the profession of exotic dancing.  Her first feminist thought was that they were being exploited by men who were using them as sex objects.  Her secondary, and not so neatly repressed thought was that the women deserved their treatment because of how they chose to live their lives.  Maybe they had a drug habit to feed or they didn’t respect their bodies, as they should.  A tiny, mature voice in Buffy’s head pointed out that stripping was damn good money for single mother trying to feed her kids.

“Mr. Spike does not exploit us,” the bold demon hissed, and Buffy backed up reaching for her stake.  She glanced at the other women, surprised at the shock and slight edge of hostility she saw on their faces.  “He takes good care of us.  Cleared out the riff raff and established the rules.”

“Yeah.  He ran off my bastard ex good and proper.  Won’t be seeing him again.”  The bubbly demon dimmed as she rubbed her hand soothingly across her very delicately made jaw.  “He was starting after my kids,” her wide-eyed innocence hardened.  “The Boss beat him bloody and sent him on his way.”  Buffy stared at her mutely.

“And he gave us jobs.”

“As strippers,” Buffy sputtered, indignant on their behalf.

“Better than what we were doing to feed our kids,” the bold demon told her seriously.  The darkness in her eyes chilled Buffy.  It wasn’t evil she saw.  It was the leavings of despair.  The knowledge that life could be so much worse than it was now.

“And the Boss makes sure no one touches us unless we say so.  Not even his own guys.”

“Yeah.  The last guy who owned this joint would sell us for a few hundred extra.  Mr. Spike won’t have it.  No back room business on the premises.  We aren’t even allowed to take it home from here.  He runs this place clean.”

“Spic and span,” the bubbly demon chirped.

Buffy’s eyes were dark as she listened to them.  She looked away, watching the fibers fluff under the toe of her boot as she rubbed it over the plush carpet.  She didn’t want to ask if he took advantage of them, but she had to.  She just had to know.

“Does he…?”  She couldn’t finish.  The thought of it hurt her heart in ways she didn’t completely understand.  It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

“No!” the demons spat in unison.  Their vehemence was so startling that Buffy looked up, wide-eyed.

“The Boss treats us real respectful.”

The bold demon waited until she had Buffy’s complete, undivided attention and looked her straight in the eye.  “He never even looks at other women.  He’s a good man, that one.”

The demon women murmured their assent to the demon’s statement.

A tiny demon with striking burgundy hair spoke up shyly.  She kept her head down as she spoke.  “He helps pay for my schooling,” she said quietly.  “Says I’m too smart to shake my tits.”  She flamed a becoming shade that didn’t clash as much as it should with her coloring.  “He says I remind him of someone he knows.  It’s not just me though.  He offers it to all us girls.”

“He tells us we gotta make the moula to feed our broods, but if we can find a better way to do it we should.”  Buffy turned her surprised gaze at the sexpot.  She would have thought the sexually charged woman loved her job, but there was a quietude to the woman’s heavily kohl lined eyes that said differently.

“Not that he looks down at us.”

“No,” they chorused in unison.

“He treats us very properly,” the dainty demon beamed at her.

“Ladies, the Slayer wants to see the Boss.  You’ve held her up long enough.”  Dekker stepped up beside her.

They grumbled good naturedly, and after another round of congratulations on her baby, Dekker led her away into the hall.  There were a series of closed doors, but they didn’t stop until they reached the end.  Besides the door was a lavish rosewood settee with hunter green padding.  Buffy, wordlessly, sank into the seat.  Dekker looked at her in askance, clearly discomforted by her behavior.  She flashed him a wan smile that was far from reassuring. 

“I just need to sit a bit.  I need to think.  I’ll let myself in when I’m ready.”

Dekker looked torn.  He wanted to make sure she was safely delivered to the Boss, yet at the same time she was the Slayer.  He couldn’t make her do a damn thing she didn’t want to do.  Right, now she wanted to sit.

He shifted in uncertainty, before turning on his heel.  He returned to the bar, where he could still see her.  Relatively alone, she bent forward so her elbows were braced on her knees and contemplated the upheaval of her life.