FIC: Seraph (25/26)
Dec. 6th, 2009 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupStory begins here. All parts may be found here.
Beautified by my fabulous betas,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hello_spikey, phoenixofborg, and penny_lane_42. Thank you, ladies!
~~~~~
In three hours, or maybe three and a half, depending on medical bureaucracy, he’d get to see her. Or possibly never, if certain people didn’t get a move on. “Oy! Not getting any thinner, here!” Spike called from just inside the Summers threshold. It was only minutes until sundown, but the last he’d seen of Buffy, she had the phone stuck to her ear and still a good half-hour’s primping to go. Xander hadn’t even made an appearance yet.
Dawn walked unhurriedly out of the dining room, a camera in hand. “Mom called. She says we have to get pictures.”
“Oh. Good.” As if he were going to ever forget his first glimpse of her, once he finally got it.
“Of you, stupid.” She waved the camera at him.
“Of... You bloody well are not!”
“But you have to have evidence!”
“Of what? Me bein’ a government experiment? Serial code seventeen, not to mention whole stacks of computer files. There’s your evidence.”
“For the baby,” she said with that peculiarly teenaged superiority. “When she asks where she came from, what are you going to tell her?”
He looked blankly at Dawn. Tell... her? About this?
“You have to show her something. So smile.”
He scowled. “I am not...”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Buffy, is Mom still on the phone?” she called, wandering off.
“Give it up,” Xander said, walking in the front door, keys dangling from his finger. “You know you’ll do whatever they want.”
Spike sighed and pressed the heel of his hand into the foremost ache in his back. Enough with last night’s treacley sentiment; the moment he had his body to himself again couldn’t come too soon.
“He won’t let me,” said Dawn, wandering in again with the phone to her ear. “Yeah. Here he is.” She thrust the phone at him.
“Joyce?” he muttered into the mouthpiece. “Look--”
“Still gorgeous,” she said.
“You... Bloody...” It was a family conspiracy. Had to be. His sputter turned to a laugh. “I’m not doing that Demi Moore thing, you understand me?”
“You’d better not,” she said. “It’s my daughter taking the pictures.”
He laughed again. “All right. All right. Bloody women.”
“Take care, Spike.”
Her heartfelt tone gave him a moment’s pause before he managed, “Yeah. Will do.”
When he’d clicked the phone off, Dawn was waiting, camera still in hand. “So?”
He sighed. “Where do you want me?”
The pictures as eventually taken had Spike on the couch, a Summers girl on each side. The first shot was relatively solemn -- damn near a family portrait, whispered a mental voice -- but by the second Dawn was gesturing bunny ears behind his head and camera-wielding Willow was telling him to ‘ham it up.’ And Spike, almost a father and sandwiched between girls grinning at him, obliged. By the end he had his arms along the back of the couch, properly nonchalant about the three girls crowded around him -- Tara had arrived -- with their hands patched across his stomach and their 100-watt smiles turned to the camera.
“Pretty sure I don’t want to know how those turn out,” he said afterwards. “Now, can we go already? I want to see my baby girl.”
They were the magic words, it seemed. They all piled into the one car -- apparently convenience had overruled the need for seatbelts and a second vehicle -- and pulled onto Revello just after the last glint of sunset dropped behind the hills.
Scenery slid past the window: dry, knotty scrub; oaks bent and wind-twisted, like spooks flailing in the dark. He’d almost forgotten there was a world beyond Sunnydale; beyond, even, the smothering little two-story on Revello.
Behind him, the girls chattered about the pictures, about him, about the surgery. Somewhere along the way someone had convinced Willow and Dawn that they did not, in fact, need to attend the actual slicing-open, but the girls were adamant about seeing his little one at the very first possible moment, once she was born.
He knew the feeling.
“You ready for this?” asked Xander, his eyes still following the stark white-black road stretching ahead.
Spike gave a harsh chuckle. “What do you think?”
After a pause, Xander said, “I think I’d be quaking under the bed about now.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t really fit under there anymore.”
A snort and flickered glance, and then the sort of good-humored grin that, six months ago, Spike would have bet he’d never prod out of a Scooby. Turned out, all it took was getting knocked up. “So this is it?” Xander asked. “Parenthood ho?”
Spike took a deep breath. “Looks like.”
Silence then, as they drove into the outskirts of a small, comfortable town of the picket-fence variety. Also of the demon variety, for those who saw the Lira’ashihal clan symbols woven into the dreamcatchers and the scrawl of Shirakanian burnt over the doorways. Spike had heard of Oak Hollow; it was a town with too few humans and too much mostly-but-not-always-pacifist muscle for a vamp to bother with.
“We’ve got about ten minutes,” Xander said. “Assuming I’m looking at this map right side up.”
Ten minutes. Maybe an hour of waiting and prep. The time under the knife. And then...
“What about her name?” Dawn asked, again. Spike turned to tell her, again, that he had to see the girl first.
In the space of an instant, a shot broke the night behind them and Xander’s left rear tire shuddered and blew. Dawn screamed as the car fishtailed, fighting Xander’s grip on the wheel while the tire thump-thumped beneath them.
“Not now,” Spike ground out, dropping his arms around his belly. Not when he almost had her. And she was so fragile...
“They’re behind us!” said Willow. “I think they’re vamps.”
“Vamps with guns?” Xander cried. “That’s not fair!”
Spike twisted far enough to look around the headrest, and by the light of the street lamps could just see a jeep with a rifle sticking out the passenger window. A fanged figure stood in the back, black robe flapping madly behind.
“Bloody hell.”
“What? What?” said Xander, hands in a deathgrip. “I’m supposed to be decelerating, here!”
“It’s that bloody cult.” His breath was ragged in his throat. “They’re after us. Me and her.”
“There’s more of them,” called Willow. “A couple more cars, at least. Xander, they’re gaining!”
“Can you get us to the clinic?” Buffy said from just behind Spike’s ear, her voice sharp and low.
“Sure,” Xander said shakily. “Right. The Xandermobile’s Last Stand, coming right up.”
Another shot. Dawn shrieked.
“Dawn!” cried Buffy.
“I’m okay, I’m okay. Sorry.”
They roared unevenly toward an intersection. “Where now?” Xander yelled, thrusting the scrap of paper at Spike.
It took him a moment to right the map and get his bearings. “Right,” he said, and then found himself gripping the door handle to keep from lurching into Xander’s lap at the turn. “Wouldn’t have thought this heap had that in it,” he muttered.
“There!” Dawn pointed past Spike to a squat block of a building on the left. Oak Hill Surgical Clinic, read the sign.
Xander floored the car across the street and over the half-curb. Spike braced himself against the dash as they screeched to a stop by the door. “Come on, come on!” Xander pushed out of his door and pulled Dawn’s open, gripping her by the arm and almost lifting her out.
And, damn the puddle-jumper, Spike still couldn’t get out his side. He glanced down the street to the intersection, the vamp jeep was just coming in sight. Then he grabbed the doorframe with both hands, pulled hard enough to wedge a foot under himself, and shoved.
Just as he reached the halfway point, Willow caught his flailing hand and pulled him the rest of the way out. “Come on!”
Ahead of them, Buffy paused. “Xander,” she said, “get Spike and Dawn inside, somewhere safe. Defensible.” She looked back the way they’d come, where vampire roars floated faintly over the gunning of engines. “And then I’m gonna need your help. Willow--”
Spike, Dawn, and Xander scrambled for the door. “We can help, too,” Willow was saying.
Another shot.
“Buffy!” Dawn’s twisted to see.
“Sis’ll be fine,” he said, though he wasted a glance behind him just to be sure. Dawn didn’t say anything, but she grabbed his arm and held it as they pushed through the door. Spike staggered to a stop, breath heaving, to take a long, full sniff of the premises. “Not in here yet,” he told Xander. From the sound of the yelling outside, the vamps had been intercepted, but who knew how long it’d take one or two to break through.
Hard on the heels of that thought, a vamp barreled straight through the doorpane in a spray of glass. The demon at the reception desk shrieked an earsplitting Lira’ashihal shriek. Xander stepped in front of the vamp, a stake in hand. “Get out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder.
“C’mon, Niblet,” Spike said urgently, pushing her toward the door at room’s end. Behind them came a yell like Tarzan with a chest cold, and then a grunt and the crash of breaking terra cotta.
Spike was halfway through the door when a grip fell on his shoulder, steeled with zeal and certainty. The grip pulled him back through the door and he bashed his hand on the frame as he twisted. “Coming at me from behind?” he said, dropping an elbow over his stomach. He threw a punch at the yellow eyes and connected, but the vamp barely staggered. “Coward. No honor among vamps, is that it?” Spike stumbled backward, one fist up, fangs falling and ready. He just needed the vamp to take one more step...
“Arrrrgh!” yelled Xander. He jumped the vamp, or tried, but vamp shoved him off and he slammed chest-first into the wall. It threw the vampire off its stride, though, just long enough for Spike to give it one full door-slam in the face.
“Move it!” he told at Dawn. In seconds she’d sprinted halfway down the hall, with him lumbering behind. “Hey, but stay with me!” he yelled. “Can’t have you walking into anything without me,” he said -- for however much protection he’d be.
Joyce: If it was a question of saving your daughter or saving Dawn, which would you choose?
No. No. Not going to happen.
He pushed on, alert for sounds of carnage behind them or a door shoved violently open. “We just need a small space somewhere, no windows, no vents if we can help it.” He hadn’t had good luck with vents.
“They’re locked,” Dawn said, twisting at one doorknob and then another.
“Bloody... Here, stand still.” A hand on her shoulder for balance, he aimed a sharp kick at a solid, unmarked door. Then another kick. At the third, the lock wrenched free of the doorframe and the door swung into someplace still and dark.
“Spike!” Dawn yelled, terrified eyes looking past him.
The same grip from before fell on Spike’s arm. As he twisted he took a blow to the shoulder that he’d have shrugged off six months ago and staggered under now. He kicked at the new vamp’s knee and connected. The vamp roared.
Half-recovered, Spike turned, putting up his fists and trying to settle into twelve decades’ hard-earned instincts, muddled as they were. But he had a vulnerability the size of England; he was bloody nine months pregnant.
The vamp’s foot swept behind Spike’s ankle and Spike hit the gleaming tile floor. The vamp towered over him. Before Spike could roll aside the vamp stomped onto Spike’s upper arm, pinning him. Spike shoved against the floor, trying for purchase, but the vamp only shifted his weight and lifted the other foot, an instant away from bringing that massive booted heel down on Spike’s belly.
Suddenly, silent, miraculous, Dru’s pretty wooden knife went spinning over Spike’s head and straight home into the ugly bastard’s half-robed chest. For one eternal half-second the vamp’s foot hung in the air inches above Spike, and then he dissolved, coating Spike in dust.
“Come on!” Dawn pulled at him, and he scrambled far enough upright to follow her through the door and slam it shut behind him.
The room was pitch black now, too dark even for vamp eyes. He flipped the light switch and then scanned the room, filled with shelves and tall metal cabinets. “Here,” he said, putting his shoulder to the cabinet nearest the door. A moment later Dawn was next to him, and together they heaved it crashing in front of the door. With a last shove, they shifted it even with the wall.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said. He heard the gasp in his voice and finally realized how heavily he was breathing. His knees felt as though they’d give at any moment. He leaned back against the wall, and slumped -- cautiously, one hand out to break his fall -- to the floor.
“Spike!” Dawn was at his side, her hands heavy and urgent on his arm, which probably meant he should open his eyes. “Spike, are you okay?”
“Been better,” he grunted.
“Is she okay?”
She...?
After one instant of utter panic, he found her heartbeat, as steady as always. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, she’s all right.”
It was quiet now, inside the room and out. Whatever battles were being fought, their sounds didn’t make it this far in.
“So did you see?” said Dawn. “Did you see it? I slayed him. I slayed the vampire!”
“That you did,” he mumbled.
“All by myself,” she added.
He lifted his eyelids open and managed a twisting of the lips that she might take for a smile, if she liked. “Suppose my getting a kick in doesn’t count?”
“Well...” Her brow furrowed as she considered the possible injustice of this assessment, and he relented.
“All by yourself,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, triumphant and glowing. “I totally did. And I rescued you.”
He swallowed as the truth of it hit. “Us.”
“Yeah,” she repeated, a little less certain this time. She drew her legs to her chest and peered over her bony denimed kneecaps. The focus of her gaze shifted, unseeing, to somewhere in the middle distance.
He dropped his hands to his belly. “Sorry about the jostling, love,” he murmured. He took a breath and held it, letting the rest of his awareness fall away until he could feel that flutter ease all through him. His ‘heartbeat’ was right. It was his whole life’s rhythm, now. Stop the one and you might as well stop the other.
But not yet. Please, not yet.
next part
Beautified by my fabulous betas,
hello_spikey, phoenixofborg, and penny_lane_42. Thank you, ladies!~~~~~
In three hours, or maybe three and a half, depending on medical bureaucracy, he’d get to see her. Or possibly never, if certain people didn’t get a move on. “Oy! Not getting any thinner, here!” Spike called from just inside the Summers threshold. It was only minutes until sundown, but the last he’d seen of Buffy, she had the phone stuck to her ear and still a good half-hour’s primping to go. Xander hadn’t even made an appearance yet.
Dawn walked unhurriedly out of the dining room, a camera in hand. “Mom called. She says we have to get pictures.”
“Oh. Good.” As if he were going to ever forget his first glimpse of her, once he finally got it.
“Of you, stupid.” She waved the camera at him.
“Of... You bloody well are not!”
“But you have to have evidence!”
“Of what? Me bein’ a government experiment? Serial code seventeen, not to mention whole stacks of computer files. There’s your evidence.”
“For the baby,” she said with that peculiarly teenaged superiority. “When she asks where she came from, what are you going to tell her?”
He looked blankly at Dawn. Tell... her? About this?
“You have to show her something. So smile.”
He scowled. “I am not...”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Buffy, is Mom still on the phone?” she called, wandering off.
“Give it up,” Xander said, walking in the front door, keys dangling from his finger. “You know you’ll do whatever they want.”
Spike sighed and pressed the heel of his hand into the foremost ache in his back. Enough with last night’s treacley sentiment; the moment he had his body to himself again couldn’t come too soon.
“He won’t let me,” said Dawn, wandering in again with the phone to her ear. “Yeah. Here he is.” She thrust the phone at him.
“Joyce?” he muttered into the mouthpiece. “Look--”
“Still gorgeous,” she said.
“You... Bloody...” It was a family conspiracy. Had to be. His sputter turned to a laugh. “I’m not doing that Demi Moore thing, you understand me?”
“You’d better not,” she said. “It’s my daughter taking the pictures.”
He laughed again. “All right. All right. Bloody women.”
“Take care, Spike.”
Her heartfelt tone gave him a moment’s pause before he managed, “Yeah. Will do.”
When he’d clicked the phone off, Dawn was waiting, camera still in hand. “So?”
He sighed. “Where do you want me?”
The pictures as eventually taken had Spike on the couch, a Summers girl on each side. The first shot was relatively solemn -- damn near a family portrait, whispered a mental voice -- but by the second Dawn was gesturing bunny ears behind his head and camera-wielding Willow was telling him to ‘ham it up.’ And Spike, almost a father and sandwiched between girls grinning at him, obliged. By the end he had his arms along the back of the couch, properly nonchalant about the three girls crowded around him -- Tara had arrived -- with their hands patched across his stomach and their 100-watt smiles turned to the camera.
“Pretty sure I don’t want to know how those turn out,” he said afterwards. “Now, can we go already? I want to see my baby girl.”
They were the magic words, it seemed. They all piled into the one car -- apparently convenience had overruled the need for seatbelts and a second vehicle -- and pulled onto Revello just after the last glint of sunset dropped behind the hills.
Scenery slid past the window: dry, knotty scrub; oaks bent and wind-twisted, like spooks flailing in the dark. He’d almost forgotten there was a world beyond Sunnydale; beyond, even, the smothering little two-story on Revello.
Behind him, the girls chattered about the pictures, about him, about the surgery. Somewhere along the way someone had convinced Willow and Dawn that they did not, in fact, need to attend the actual slicing-open, but the girls were adamant about seeing his little one at the very first possible moment, once she was born.
He knew the feeling.
“You ready for this?” asked Xander, his eyes still following the stark white-black road stretching ahead.
Spike gave a harsh chuckle. “What do you think?”
After a pause, Xander said, “I think I’d be quaking under the bed about now.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t really fit under there anymore.”
A snort and flickered glance, and then the sort of good-humored grin that, six months ago, Spike would have bet he’d never prod out of a Scooby. Turned out, all it took was getting knocked up. “So this is it?” Xander asked. “Parenthood ho?”
Spike took a deep breath. “Looks like.”
Silence then, as they drove into the outskirts of a small, comfortable town of the picket-fence variety. Also of the demon variety, for those who saw the Lira’ashihal clan symbols woven into the dreamcatchers and the scrawl of Shirakanian burnt over the doorways. Spike had heard of Oak Hollow; it was a town with too few humans and too much mostly-but-not-always-pacifist muscle for a vamp to bother with.
“We’ve got about ten minutes,” Xander said. “Assuming I’m looking at this map right side up.”
Ten minutes. Maybe an hour of waiting and prep. The time under the knife. And then...
“What about her name?” Dawn asked, again. Spike turned to tell her, again, that he had to see the girl first.
In the space of an instant, a shot broke the night behind them and Xander’s left rear tire shuddered and blew. Dawn screamed as the car fishtailed, fighting Xander’s grip on the wheel while the tire thump-thumped beneath them.
“Not now,” Spike ground out, dropping his arms around his belly. Not when he almost had her. And she was so fragile...
“They’re behind us!” said Willow. “I think they’re vamps.”
“Vamps with guns?” Xander cried. “That’s not fair!”
Spike twisted far enough to look around the headrest, and by the light of the street lamps could just see a jeep with a rifle sticking out the passenger window. A fanged figure stood in the back, black robe flapping madly behind.
“Bloody hell.”
“What? What?” said Xander, hands in a deathgrip. “I’m supposed to be decelerating, here!”
“It’s that bloody cult.” His breath was ragged in his throat. “They’re after us. Me and her.”
“There’s more of them,” called Willow. “A couple more cars, at least. Xander, they’re gaining!”
“Can you get us to the clinic?” Buffy said from just behind Spike’s ear, her voice sharp and low.
“Sure,” Xander said shakily. “Right. The Xandermobile’s Last Stand, coming right up.”
Another shot. Dawn shrieked.
“Dawn!” cried Buffy.
“I’m okay, I’m okay. Sorry.”
They roared unevenly toward an intersection. “Where now?” Xander yelled, thrusting the scrap of paper at Spike.
It took him a moment to right the map and get his bearings. “Right,” he said, and then found himself gripping the door handle to keep from lurching into Xander’s lap at the turn. “Wouldn’t have thought this heap had that in it,” he muttered.
“There!” Dawn pointed past Spike to a squat block of a building on the left. Oak Hill Surgical Clinic, read the sign.
Xander floored the car across the street and over the half-curb. Spike braced himself against the dash as they screeched to a stop by the door. “Come on, come on!” Xander pushed out of his door and pulled Dawn’s open, gripping her by the arm and almost lifting her out.
And, damn the puddle-jumper, Spike still couldn’t get out his side. He glanced down the street to the intersection, the vamp jeep was just coming in sight. Then he grabbed the doorframe with both hands, pulled hard enough to wedge a foot under himself, and shoved.
Just as he reached the halfway point, Willow caught his flailing hand and pulled him the rest of the way out. “Come on!”
Ahead of them, Buffy paused. “Xander,” she said, “get Spike and Dawn inside, somewhere safe. Defensible.” She looked back the way they’d come, where vampire roars floated faintly over the gunning of engines. “And then I’m gonna need your help. Willow--”
Spike, Dawn, and Xander scrambled for the door. “We can help, too,” Willow was saying.
Another shot.
“Buffy!” Dawn’s twisted to see.
“Sis’ll be fine,” he said, though he wasted a glance behind him just to be sure. Dawn didn’t say anything, but she grabbed his arm and held it as they pushed through the door. Spike staggered to a stop, breath heaving, to take a long, full sniff of the premises. “Not in here yet,” he told Xander. From the sound of the yelling outside, the vamps had been intercepted, but who knew how long it’d take one or two to break through.
Hard on the heels of that thought, a vamp barreled straight through the doorpane in a spray of glass. The demon at the reception desk shrieked an earsplitting Lira’ashihal shriek. Xander stepped in front of the vamp, a stake in hand. “Get out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder.
“C’mon, Niblet,” Spike said urgently, pushing her toward the door at room’s end. Behind them came a yell like Tarzan with a chest cold, and then a grunt and the crash of breaking terra cotta.
Spike was halfway through the door when a grip fell on his shoulder, steeled with zeal and certainty. The grip pulled him back through the door and he bashed his hand on the frame as he twisted. “Coming at me from behind?” he said, dropping an elbow over his stomach. He threw a punch at the yellow eyes and connected, but the vamp barely staggered. “Coward. No honor among vamps, is that it?” Spike stumbled backward, one fist up, fangs falling and ready. He just needed the vamp to take one more step...
“Arrrrgh!” yelled Xander. He jumped the vamp, or tried, but vamp shoved him off and he slammed chest-first into the wall. It threw the vampire off its stride, though, just long enough for Spike to give it one full door-slam in the face.
“Move it!” he told at Dawn. In seconds she’d sprinted halfway down the hall, with him lumbering behind. “Hey, but stay with me!” he yelled. “Can’t have you walking into anything without me,” he said -- for however much protection he’d be.
Joyce: If it was a question of saving your daughter or saving Dawn, which would you choose?
No. No. Not going to happen.
He pushed on, alert for sounds of carnage behind them or a door shoved violently open. “We just need a small space somewhere, no windows, no vents if we can help it.” He hadn’t had good luck with vents.
“They’re locked,” Dawn said, twisting at one doorknob and then another.
“Bloody... Here, stand still.” A hand on her shoulder for balance, he aimed a sharp kick at a solid, unmarked door. Then another kick. At the third, the lock wrenched free of the doorframe and the door swung into someplace still and dark.
“Spike!” Dawn yelled, terrified eyes looking past him.
The same grip from before fell on Spike’s arm. As he twisted he took a blow to the shoulder that he’d have shrugged off six months ago and staggered under now. He kicked at the new vamp’s knee and connected. The vamp roared.
Half-recovered, Spike turned, putting up his fists and trying to settle into twelve decades’ hard-earned instincts, muddled as they were. But he had a vulnerability the size of England; he was bloody nine months pregnant.
The vamp’s foot swept behind Spike’s ankle and Spike hit the gleaming tile floor. The vamp towered over him. Before Spike could roll aside the vamp stomped onto Spike’s upper arm, pinning him. Spike shoved against the floor, trying for purchase, but the vamp only shifted his weight and lifted the other foot, an instant away from bringing that massive booted heel down on Spike’s belly.
Suddenly, silent, miraculous, Dru’s pretty wooden knife went spinning over Spike’s head and straight home into the ugly bastard’s half-robed chest. For one eternal half-second the vamp’s foot hung in the air inches above Spike, and then he dissolved, coating Spike in dust.
“Come on!” Dawn pulled at him, and he scrambled far enough upright to follow her through the door and slam it shut behind him.
The room was pitch black now, too dark even for vamp eyes. He flipped the light switch and then scanned the room, filled with shelves and tall metal cabinets. “Here,” he said, putting his shoulder to the cabinet nearest the door. A moment later Dawn was next to him, and together they heaved it crashing in front of the door. With a last shove, they shifted it even with the wall.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said. He heard the gasp in his voice and finally realized how heavily he was breathing. His knees felt as though they’d give at any moment. He leaned back against the wall, and slumped -- cautiously, one hand out to break his fall -- to the floor.
“Spike!” Dawn was at his side, her hands heavy and urgent on his arm, which probably meant he should open his eyes. “Spike, are you okay?”
“Been better,” he grunted.
“Is she okay?”
She...?
After one instant of utter panic, he found her heartbeat, as steady as always. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, she’s all right.”
It was quiet now, inside the room and out. Whatever battles were being fought, their sounds didn’t make it this far in.
“So did you see?” said Dawn. “Did you see it? I slayed him. I slayed the vampire!”
“That you did,” he mumbled.
“All by myself,” she added.
He lifted his eyelids open and managed a twisting of the lips that she might take for a smile, if she liked. “Suppose my getting a kick in doesn’t count?”
“Well...” Her brow furrowed as she considered the possible injustice of this assessment, and he relented.
“All by yourself,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, triumphant and glowing. “I totally did. And I rescued you.”
He swallowed as the truth of it hit. “Us.”
“Yeah,” she repeated, a little less certain this time. She drew her legs to her chest and peered over her bony denimed kneecaps. The focus of her gaze shifted, unseeing, to somewhere in the middle distance.
He dropped his hands to his belly. “Sorry about the jostling, love,” he murmured. He took a breath and held it, letting the rest of his awareness fall away until he could feel that flutter ease all through him. His ‘heartbeat’ was right. It was his whole life’s rhythm, now. Stop the one and you might as well stop the other.
But not yet. Please, not yet.
next part
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 04:56 pm (UTC)The escape and the battle were vividly drawn and very exciting. My heart was in my throat as the cloaked vampire had his boot hovering over Spike's belly. Dawn's nick of time save found me letting go a breath I didn't realize I was holding. Excellent job.
The danger still isn't over and Spike's still pregnant and there's only one chapter to go! I'm on the edge of my seat.
Thanks for another vividly drawn update. This was an excellent way to start the day.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:42 am (UTC)Heh. I didn't mean for it to be a surprise, exactly, but apparently I was sneakier about it than I thought. I'm so glad you enjoyed the escape and battle scenes - action stuff is very much not my strong suit, and I'm tickled that they worked for you.
Poor Spike - still pregnant. He just doesn't get a break does he?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 05:13 pm (UTC)But the training paid off, and it wasn't.
I love the gang rallying around Spike and Spike-baby to protect them. I just hope the rest are alright -- that the vamp that followed them didn't do too much damage to Xander to get past him.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:46 am (UTC)Hooray! Actiony bits are very much not my strong suit, so I'm thrilled to hear they worked for you.
I love the gang rallying around Spike and Spike-baby to protect them.
I kind of love it, too. This fic started off just being about Spike, baby, and Dawn, but it's ended up also being about Spike and the Scoobies, which I think I don't mind at all. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:50 am (UTC)Awwww. There could be the highly prestigious TreadingTheDark Not!Crack!Mpreg Award. Or something. :)
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Date: 2009-12-06 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:55 am (UTC)*sings* They say that all good things must end someday
Autumn leaves must fall...
Writing this story's been quite an experience, and by and large I'm pretty pleased with what I've ended up with. I'm awfully glad you've stayed along for the ride all this time. :)
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Date: 2009-12-06 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:56 am (UTC)And I'm pleased you like my Xander. He hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention this fic, but he and Spike are lots of fun to write together - so much snark!
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Date: 2009-12-06 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 01:00 am (UTC)Frankly, I'm tickled pink to know I can work up enough actiony suspense to scare anyone. :)
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Date: 2009-12-07 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 12:07 am (UTC)I loved the Joyce parts. Your sly Joyce always makes me happy. I am v. v. worried, though I am convinced that Willow, Tara, and Buffy will save the day, as always. Right? Right!?
Oh, and Xander did good, too. *pets him*
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Date: 2009-12-12 01:02 am (UTC)I am v. v. worried, though I am convinced that Willow, Tara, and Buffy will save the day, as always. Right? Right!?
:)
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Date: 2009-12-07 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 01:03 am (UTC)Yay, Dawn. It's not like she gets a chance to do the saving very often; I was really glad I was able to give her the chance here.
I'll be sad when this is over.
Aww. Thank you. :)
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Date: 2009-12-07 10:54 am (UTC)Terrific chapter, seamlessly blending humor and action.
I'm proud of Dawn.
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Date: 2009-12-12 01:04 am (UTC)I'm proud of Dawn, too. She's made of good Summers stock, yanno. :)
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Date: 2009-12-07 04:00 pm (UTC)And yay for Dawn slaying! *pats her*
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Date: 2009-12-12 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:37 am (UTC)Should've known that Dawn's knife-throwing training would come in handy at some point. :) I am kind of torn, though, because as much as I am looking forward to the next chapter, I'm not looking forward to it being the end. And I kind of cannot believe I am actually saying this, but since it looks like the fic is going to end with the birth, it'd be awfully nice if we could get to see Daddy Spike sometime...
Curse you, you evil wench, you've got me asking for a sequel to the mpreg!!!no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 01:11 am (UTC)Hee. Yeah, that entire plot point may have been put in solely to support this scene...
Curse you, you evil wench, you've got me asking for a sequel to the mpreg!!!
Hah! I'm an evil wench! I'm an evil wench! *preens*
Although really, compared to an mpreg fic, the sequel to an mpreg fic is downright respectable, right? No more mpreg, just the ordinary horrors of kidfic fluff. *g*
And Daddy!Spike is generally adorable; I suspect there will be some sequelish ficlet-type stuff to come, at the very least. :)
FIC: Seraph (25/26)
Date: 2009-12-22 11:11 pm (UTC)Uh-huh... so the vamps found them. For now they seems save but only one more chapter to go...
Good thing I can read on. :)
Re: FIC: Seraph (25/26)
Date: 2010-01-02 12:20 am (UTC)Hee. I'm glad you got the reference - it's good to know I wasn't throwing completely obsolute cultural references out there.
Good thing I can read on. :)
There are indeed certain benefits to waiting until WIP's get finished... ;)
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