Home is the Hunter (4/5)
Thank you to whoever nominated The End at No Rest for the Wicked Awards. I love that fic (*shameless*).
Hmmm. Porn Battle? Possibly...
Part Four of Spike in the Rulesverse now - plottier and more emotional than the previous ones. Part Five, with actual resolution, won't be up tomorrow, but it is nearly ready for posting. I'm hoping to have it up by the end of the week, if work will stop being so brain-draining.
Title: Home is the Hunter (4/5)
Characters: Spike, Giles and ensemble, with cameos from Wesley, Dawn, Illyria and Faith, and quinara's dragon. Kind of.
Rating: PG13 to be safe
Summary: The Fourth Quest: in which our hero braves the cannibal isles, and suffers qualms about his unlife-purpose.
Part three was here
March 2008
Spike’s report was shorter than usual. Silking was getting some decent results, but nothing enough to get them excited. Giles suggested it might be the moment for Spike to take one of what were now his regular short breaks. Unexpectedly he got no thanks.
Spike paused, meditatively, in fact. Then cracked. “Buffy wants to have a baby. Did you know that?
“Mmm.” It had been mentioned. Giles was staying well out of it.
“Effing stupid idea.”
“Why?”
“Well, ‘snot going to be my kid, is it?”
“Why not?” (Giles wondered whether he sounded as though he were mocking Spike, with the simple questions. Time to expand a little, even if it meant getting off his comfortable position on the fence.) “Look, Spike. I have no children. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel that I have a family. Many men raise children not biologically theirs and... I’m sorry, this is patronising, isn’t it?”
Snort. “Yeah, I’m way ahead of you. But it’s true, innit? Just... we don’t live safe lives, me and the Slayer. And I’m off round the world after the fucking Codex two months in six. Not exactly prime bonding. What if I didn’t... get that feeling? Like it’s mine? There’s the Slayer being mummy to the max - where does that leave me? Back in sodding Volgograd on my tod? Or then, what if... something happened... to Buffy? ‘M not exactly a fit and proper dad, am I? Specially not without her...”
There was little Giles could offer to that, except to promise support in whatever they decided.
Slayers didn’t have children, as a rule. There were good reasons for that, as well as bad.
Vampires didn’t have children at all. There were bloody sound reasons for that too.
*
October 2008
“Right. There’s good news, bad news and fucking awful news. Any preference?”
Giles’s grip on the phone turned agonising. Spike didn’t sound humorous. “Let’s start with the urgent news.”
“None of it’s urgent, Rupert. Because Silking is dead.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Fucking awful news, didn’t I say?”
“How?”
“That’s the bad news. Gombril, I think. Pretty certain, actually.”
“Then it’s loose. A full phase of Delenteria completed. I would call that significantly worse than bad news, Spike.”
Pause.
“What on earth is the good news then?”
Spike laughed. It wasn’t a good sound. “Buffy’s pregnant. So we might have a little’un just in time for the end of the world. In’t life grand?”
Giles had guessed already, but Spike didn’t need to hear that now. And, despite rampant speculation in the Lehane-Giles household, it also wasn’t time to ask how they’d decided to go ahead with producing offspring, given that Spike was just as dead as he’d ever been.
It was time for bracing certainties. “Sounds like congratulations are in order. And also as though we’d better put our backs into fixing this sooner rather than later.”
The evil dead snorted down the line. But he seemed pretty much agreed. “Yeah. Tarim, then? Might finally get a crack at that dragon.”
There was no dragon. Spike actually seemed disappointed about that.
*
February 2009
“Checking in, checking in, Rogue Agent 17 on the line.”
Confused silence greeted him. Then a cautious, “Uh, hi?”
“Shit. Who’s that?”
“Who’s that? We don’t have code numbers.”
“It’s Spike, you daft kid. And if you knew your Slayer history, you’d know me and the number 17 have a special relationship.”
“Oh. Right. Hey Spike, this is Erik. Wanna report in?”
“I want to know where Giles is.”
“He’s on vacation. Just a coupla days. So, report please.” And that was an order, because this snotty brat wasn’t half-bad at his job.
“Yeah, well when he gets back, tell him I’ve smitten the Gombril back to the eighth circle of hell. So, world saved and all that. Go me.”
“Cool. Anywhere on finding the Codex?” Bloody, bloody hell. The kid didn’t even sound impressed. Spike rang off, grumpily, and went to seek the boat to Borneo.
*
March 2009
“Headhunters? Couldn’t catch a three-toed sloth. And they don’t have any codices either. Can I call it a day here, Rupert?” Spike was probably drunk, but not so much it was slurring his speech yet. Still, not a good moment for rational discussion.
“You sound miserable and demotivated certainly. Do you think the situation is stable enough?”
“Stable? It’s dead as a dodo-shaped doornail. Thought the Gombril would lead us somewhere, but dead end, dead end, dead end. I want some life, Rupert. And... well, you know I want to be home for it.”
Giles spoke the apparently unsayable word: “The baby’s due next month, isn’t it? Yes, perhaps it’s time you came back.”
Pause. “Yeah. Better find out what kind of Dad I make. Other than an absent, dead one.”
Grim words. But at least Spike wanted to come home. Giles started to feel cautiously better about Buffy’s impending baby.
*
Fifth and final part is here