Inheritance and Reflections
Sep. 1st, 2022 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apachefirecatTitle: Inheritance and Reflections
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Spike/Buffy, Joyce
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: Spike does something he swore he'd never do again -- pulls someone from their grave.
Word Count: 2,230
Written For: Nekid Spike: Mini Nekid Guest of the Month: Joyce (Please forgive me for being early, but when I was jotting down all the new challenges posted today, this was the one most determined to be written!) and 1 Million Words A to Z: I (Inheritance)
Warnings: Future Fic
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
"I'm sorry," he says the minute he sees her. He's a little startled that she's actually come and rocks back on his heels, looking at her through wide eyes.
She remembers well how wide his eyes have always seemed to the mother in her. She remembers, too, how he's always seemed so handsome, so sensual, but was never for her. He was her choice, not that it mattered. She always liked him far better than Buffy's other boyfriends. He was lost, but she had known her daughter could have found him just as he could find her daughter. And he had found her daughter so many times. When Buffy had been lost to everyone else including herself, Spike had somehow managed to always find her.
Just as he had somehow found her. Joyce looks around herself, puzzled. "How -- " she asks, but she doesn't want to voice the words. She doesn't want to admit that she's actually dead, that she's unable to reach her daughter, her children now or ever again. Tears prick her eyes as she thinks about that, but he's called her here for a reason. She must be strong. For her children, she must be strong just as she's been since the very first moment that she found out about her daughter's calling, and earlier too. She had had to be strong to face Hank. She had to be strong to put him out of their lives when she had finally been forced to accept that the father of her child was no good for either of them.
Perhaps seeing how her father's betrayal had hurt her and how she had had to act afterward toward him was part of the reason why Buffy had never understood why Joyce liked the man in front of her now, but Spike was so much different from Hank. He was so much different from Angel and from all the other boys Buffy had ever brought home, or all those she'd been with since. He was a lost lamb. Deep down, all he had ever wanted was love and acceptance, but the life he had had, the life they had discussed so many nights in the commercial breaks between Passions and over hot cocoa with those marshmallows he had adored so much, had never led him to understanding how to be loved.
Buffy has, though. Joyce knows she has, because she's been watching over them both. She's been watching them each grow in their own ways and together since long before Spike had that chip placed in him all those years ago. She's been watching him struggle and fight to become a man not only that her daughter could love but who was worthy of loving her daughter. He's changed a lot. He's grown a lot. But in those sweet eyes of his, Joyce still recognizes the lost, little boy, the boy who was so scared of loving and not being loved in return.
"I'm surprised you -- " Words still fail her as she looks around the cemetery. "How did you even...?" she puzzles again. "I mean, Sunnydale's gone. My grave is gone."
"Memories," he says softly. "Graves are just a honorary thing. Once you die, Joyce, you've got no connection left to your old body."
"But then how did you -- ?"
He opens his palm, and she gasps in surprise at the small, pink item within his hand. "Buffy's baby booties!" She had thought those long gone, since before the move to Sunnydale. She had not seen them for years before then, and surely if Buffy had found them, she would have destroyed them in a fit of embarrassment. She starts to reach for them but stops and curls her fingers back into her palm. She is only a spirit now; she cannot touch anything, or anyone.
Spike gives a partial shrug, subconsciously flexing his muscles underneath his big, black leather duster. He's embarrassed now, shy, and despite the outward bravado he always tries to enforce, uncertain of himself. "There were a lot of people breaking into houses and ransacking Sunnydale in its last days. Found them in a box one night in what used to be your room. Never told anyone." He curls his fingers back around the booties and closes his fist.
"I knitted them myself you know. It was one of those inspirations I got that Hank never understood."
"He didn't understand a lot about you. It was his loss."
She smiles fondly. "You always told me that."
"And I meant it every time. Still do. You're a good woman, Joyce."
"Were."
"Spike -- " Her eyes finally meet his again. There can be only one reason why he's here tonight, one reason why he would bring her back to this world. "What's wrong with my daughter?"
"Not a thing, luv," he assures her quickly. "I just..." His head drops, and he puts his hands back into his pocket. He'd kill for one of those cups of chocolate and tiny marshmallows right now. Well, perhaps not kill. He doesn't really kill anymore, not with the world's best heroine as his girlfriend.
"I... Hum... That is..."
Joyce closes the distance between them. The silver moonlight shines through her as she smiles fondly and kindly up at him. "You can still tell me anything you know. Who am I going to tell now?" He'd threatened her once on an almost nightly basis, but she'd never let those threats bother her. She'd been able to tell by the tone of his voice how incapable he was of actually following through with them, and she'd known they'd been spoken by a scared, little boy who was only reaching out and daring to speak truths he wouldn't utter to another soul to the one friend he'd thought he had.
"You'd be surprised how many -- "
"Spike!" She sounds more irritated than she'd intended and catches herself before she can give him a whole long list of how she knows the beings with which he is accustomed to interacting may do things one way but she does things another. Instead she reaches a hand out toward his shoulder and stops just short of actually trying to touch him. She doesn't want to see her hand pass through his flesh. The knowledge that she's dead is already hurtful enough; she doesn't need to see the actual irrefutable proof. "You know I'm not going to tell anyone. I never told anybody any of your other secrets, did I?" she asks imploringly, looking up into his eyes.
"No. No," he says, gaining a breath of air he doesn't need, "you didn't. And you are her mum."
"Spike," her eyes search his, "did you... Are you...?"
He had held the booties she'd knitted for her baby in his left hand; now he withdraws his right from his other pocket and reveals a small, black velvet box. He pops the lid open, and the moonlight sparkles dazzlingly on the diamond-studded, gold ring. He must have been saving for a year at least to be able to buy that ring! And she has no doubt he'd bought it. He may be a skilled thief, but she knows he wants to do right by her daughter and has for a very long time.
"Oh, yes!" she cries, clasping her hands together in delight.
"Moreover, do you -- "
"Yes! Yes!"
"You give me permission to marry your daughter?"
He's clearly surprised, but Joyce continues to cry out in delight, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
He snaps the box shut and slides it quickly back into his pocket. It wouldn't do for anybody to be happening by the cemetery, see him holding out an engagement ring to a ghost, and report back to Buffy. It won't do for her to find out about the ring before he can give her the perfect night in any regard. "So you... You actually approve?"
"Yes! Do I have to cry it out at the top of my lungs?! Spike, I've been waiting for this!"
"You have?"
"Yes! Ever since that little boy first started coming into my kitchen, so lonely, so lost, so desperate for love -- "
"I ain't no little boy!"
She beams at him. "To me, you are."
"I'm old enough to be your -- "
"I don't care. You were always a kind, sweet, sensitive young boy."
He sniffs in disdain. "Don't be telling people that. Ruin my reputation."
"Marry my daughter, and you won't care about that reputation any more." Her eyes meet his again. "I don't think you do now, not really."
"You're right," he says, his shoulders slumping down again. "I just care about her. I just love her and want her to be happy, but I want to be happy beside her. I have for a very long time now. Do you think it's right?"
"I know it's right. I used to pray for you to find happiness, and for her to find happiness without that Angel fellow who was never good for her, and then it dawned on me one night that the two of you could be perfect for each other if not for the age difference. But as I've watched you and I've seen you be there for her time and time again... Spike, there is no one I would rather my daughter marry or be with than you. Of course, though," she flashes him a wide grin, "don't tell her that. You know there's no quicker way to turn a girl off of a guy who's good for her than for her mother to approve."
He grins in response. "I did think about that," he admits. "I hated to wake you, to bring you back from Heaven even for a moment... You know I hated it when they did that to Buffy. It was so unfair, so selfish. We were selfish." He'd hated it, but he'd gone along with the idea, so desperate to be back with the woman he'd already loved though he'd not known how to show her that love. He hoped he was doing right now. Yet he had brought somebody back from the peaceful dead, something he'd sworn he'd never do again. "I did swear I would never bring anybody back -- "
"Well, I'm only here for a visit, right?" She sweeps her hands through his shoulder, and he nods.
"Yeah. Just for a visit. I just... needed to ask you, you know. It's the right thing to do. I wouldn't ask that pompous Hank. He's never cared about you or your daughter."
"You're right," she says, "he didn't. I think there was a time he cared for Buffy, but that was a long time ago. He never would have been able to adjust to her new life... style. He was already bad for her. He was bad for us both long before the divorce. But he still wasn't as bad as your own mom or Faith's dad or -- "
"I get the picture, Joyce," Spike cuts in with a teasing grin. "He was a scumbag, but there's a lot scummier scumbags."
"Yeah." A thoughtful expression feels her face. Softly, suddenly, she whispers to him, "Thank you, Spike."
He knows the spell is ending; he can see her already beginning to fade. She must be hearing some kind of calling, because he can tell she can feel it too. "For what?"
"For being there for her." Joyce smiles at him, and he sees love shine in her eyes. It must be love for Buffy, he knows, because it couldn't be love for him.
"It's for both of you," she says quickly, "and thank you for being there for her. Every parent... Well, every loving parent worries about their children when they know they are going to pass. I so wanted to be able to leave her something, and the only home I could buy for her was in the mouth of Hell itself. It wasn't exactly the kind of inheritance I'd always planned on leaving for my daughter. But she has you now, so I know she's happy and... as safe as any Vampire Slayer can be." She smiles and is still rolling her eyes when she vanishes from his sight.
He muses over her words as he begins to walk home, head down and shoulders sunk again. "What was for both of us?" he whispers to himself, and then actually jumps like he hasn't in centuries at the answer that comes.
"My love."
He smiles. "I love you too, Joyce. Miss you. You were the closest thing I ever actually knew to a mum after my mum..." He lets his words trail off, though a part of him somehow knows instinctively that she's still listening. Perhaps she's always been listening. But he doesn't want to dwell on the past. He actually has a bright future now to which to look forward, and he wants to get home to Buffy soon and start that future tonight -- even if she won't get the ring tonight. He's going to make everything perfect for her when he proposes. He'll find a way now that he's got her mum's blessing. Most of all, he knows as his old, dead heart warms, he'll find a way to love her right because he at last is loved and not even just by Buffy although there's still nothing in any world that could mean more to him than her love.
The End
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Spike/Buffy, Joyce
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: Spike does something he swore he'd never do again -- pulls someone from their grave.
Word Count: 2,230
Written For: Nekid Spike: Mini Nekid Guest of the Month: Joyce (Please forgive me for being early, but when I was jotting down all the new challenges posted today, this was the one most determined to be written!) and 1 Million Words A to Z: I (Inheritance)
Warnings: Future Fic
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
"I'm sorry," he says the minute he sees her. He's a little startled that she's actually come and rocks back on his heels, looking at her through wide eyes.
She remembers well how wide his eyes have always seemed to the mother in her. She remembers, too, how he's always seemed so handsome, so sensual, but was never for her. He was her choice, not that it mattered. She always liked him far better than Buffy's other boyfriends. He was lost, but she had known her daughter could have found him just as he could find her daughter. And he had found her daughter so many times. When Buffy had been lost to everyone else including herself, Spike had somehow managed to always find her.
Just as he had somehow found her. Joyce looks around herself, puzzled. "How -- " she asks, but she doesn't want to voice the words. She doesn't want to admit that she's actually dead, that she's unable to reach her daughter, her children now or ever again. Tears prick her eyes as she thinks about that, but he's called her here for a reason. She must be strong. For her children, she must be strong just as she's been since the very first moment that she found out about her daughter's calling, and earlier too. She had had to be strong to face Hank. She had to be strong to put him out of their lives when she had finally been forced to accept that the father of her child was no good for either of them.
Perhaps seeing how her father's betrayal had hurt her and how she had had to act afterward toward him was part of the reason why Buffy had never understood why Joyce liked the man in front of her now, but Spike was so much different from Hank. He was so much different from Angel and from all the other boys Buffy had ever brought home, or all those she'd been with since. He was a lost lamb. Deep down, all he had ever wanted was love and acceptance, but the life he had had, the life they had discussed so many nights in the commercial breaks between Passions and over hot cocoa with those marshmallows he had adored so much, had never led him to understanding how to be loved.
Buffy has, though. Joyce knows she has, because she's been watching over them both. She's been watching them each grow in their own ways and together since long before Spike had that chip placed in him all those years ago. She's been watching him struggle and fight to become a man not only that her daughter could love but who was worthy of loving her daughter. He's changed a lot. He's grown a lot. But in those sweet eyes of his, Joyce still recognizes the lost, little boy, the boy who was so scared of loving and not being loved in return.
"I'm surprised you -- " Words still fail her as she looks around the cemetery. "How did you even...?" she puzzles again. "I mean, Sunnydale's gone. My grave is gone."
"Memories," he says softly. "Graves are just a honorary thing. Once you die, Joyce, you've got no connection left to your old body."
"But then how did you -- ?"
He opens his palm, and she gasps in surprise at the small, pink item within his hand. "Buffy's baby booties!" She had thought those long gone, since before the move to Sunnydale. She had not seen them for years before then, and surely if Buffy had found them, she would have destroyed them in a fit of embarrassment. She starts to reach for them but stops and curls her fingers back into her palm. She is only a spirit now; she cannot touch anything, or anyone.
Spike gives a partial shrug, subconsciously flexing his muscles underneath his big, black leather duster. He's embarrassed now, shy, and despite the outward bravado he always tries to enforce, uncertain of himself. "There were a lot of people breaking into houses and ransacking Sunnydale in its last days. Found them in a box one night in what used to be your room. Never told anyone." He curls his fingers back around the booties and closes his fist.
"I knitted them myself you know. It was one of those inspirations I got that Hank never understood."
"He didn't understand a lot about you. It was his loss."
She smiles fondly. "You always told me that."
"And I meant it every time. Still do. You're a good woman, Joyce."
"Were."
"Spike -- " Her eyes finally meet his again. There can be only one reason why he's here tonight, one reason why he would bring her back to this world. "What's wrong with my daughter?"
"Not a thing, luv," he assures her quickly. "I just..." His head drops, and he puts his hands back into his pocket. He'd kill for one of those cups of chocolate and tiny marshmallows right now. Well, perhaps not kill. He doesn't really kill anymore, not with the world's best heroine as his girlfriend.
"I... Hum... That is..."
Joyce closes the distance between them. The silver moonlight shines through her as she smiles fondly and kindly up at him. "You can still tell me anything you know. Who am I going to tell now?" He'd threatened her once on an almost nightly basis, but she'd never let those threats bother her. She'd been able to tell by the tone of his voice how incapable he was of actually following through with them, and she'd known they'd been spoken by a scared, little boy who was only reaching out and daring to speak truths he wouldn't utter to another soul to the one friend he'd thought he had.
"You'd be surprised how many -- "
"Spike!" She sounds more irritated than she'd intended and catches herself before she can give him a whole long list of how she knows the beings with which he is accustomed to interacting may do things one way but she does things another. Instead she reaches a hand out toward his shoulder and stops just short of actually trying to touch him. She doesn't want to see her hand pass through his flesh. The knowledge that she's dead is already hurtful enough; she doesn't need to see the actual irrefutable proof. "You know I'm not going to tell anyone. I never told anybody any of your other secrets, did I?" she asks imploringly, looking up into his eyes.
"No. No," he says, gaining a breath of air he doesn't need, "you didn't. And you are her mum."
"Spike," her eyes search his, "did you... Are you...?"
He had held the booties she'd knitted for her baby in his left hand; now he withdraws his right from his other pocket and reveals a small, black velvet box. He pops the lid open, and the moonlight sparkles dazzlingly on the diamond-studded, gold ring. He must have been saving for a year at least to be able to buy that ring! And she has no doubt he'd bought it. He may be a skilled thief, but she knows he wants to do right by her daughter and has for a very long time.
"Oh, yes!" she cries, clasping her hands together in delight.
"Moreover, do you -- "
"Yes! Yes!"
"You give me permission to marry your daughter?"
He's clearly surprised, but Joyce continues to cry out in delight, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
He snaps the box shut and slides it quickly back into his pocket. It wouldn't do for anybody to be happening by the cemetery, see him holding out an engagement ring to a ghost, and report back to Buffy. It won't do for her to find out about the ring before he can give her the perfect night in any regard. "So you... You actually approve?"
"Yes! Do I have to cry it out at the top of my lungs?! Spike, I've been waiting for this!"
"You have?"
"Yes! Ever since that little boy first started coming into my kitchen, so lonely, so lost, so desperate for love -- "
"I ain't no little boy!"
She beams at him. "To me, you are."
"I'm old enough to be your -- "
"I don't care. You were always a kind, sweet, sensitive young boy."
He sniffs in disdain. "Don't be telling people that. Ruin my reputation."
"Marry my daughter, and you won't care about that reputation any more." Her eyes meet his again. "I don't think you do now, not really."
"You're right," he says, his shoulders slumping down again. "I just care about her. I just love her and want her to be happy, but I want to be happy beside her. I have for a very long time now. Do you think it's right?"
"I know it's right. I used to pray for you to find happiness, and for her to find happiness without that Angel fellow who was never good for her, and then it dawned on me one night that the two of you could be perfect for each other if not for the age difference. But as I've watched you and I've seen you be there for her time and time again... Spike, there is no one I would rather my daughter marry or be with than you. Of course, though," she flashes him a wide grin, "don't tell her that. You know there's no quicker way to turn a girl off of a guy who's good for her than for her mother to approve."
He grins in response. "I did think about that," he admits. "I hated to wake you, to bring you back from Heaven even for a moment... You know I hated it when they did that to Buffy. It was so unfair, so selfish. We were selfish." He'd hated it, but he'd gone along with the idea, so desperate to be back with the woman he'd already loved though he'd not known how to show her that love. He hoped he was doing right now. Yet he had brought somebody back from the peaceful dead, something he'd sworn he'd never do again. "I did swear I would never bring anybody back -- "
"Well, I'm only here for a visit, right?" She sweeps her hands through his shoulder, and he nods.
"Yeah. Just for a visit. I just... needed to ask you, you know. It's the right thing to do. I wouldn't ask that pompous Hank. He's never cared about you or your daughter."
"You're right," she says, "he didn't. I think there was a time he cared for Buffy, but that was a long time ago. He never would have been able to adjust to her new life... style. He was already bad for her. He was bad for us both long before the divorce. But he still wasn't as bad as your own mom or Faith's dad or -- "
"I get the picture, Joyce," Spike cuts in with a teasing grin. "He was a scumbag, but there's a lot scummier scumbags."
"Yeah." A thoughtful expression feels her face. Softly, suddenly, she whispers to him, "Thank you, Spike."
He knows the spell is ending; he can see her already beginning to fade. She must be hearing some kind of calling, because he can tell she can feel it too. "For what?"
"For being there for her." Joyce smiles at him, and he sees love shine in her eyes. It must be love for Buffy, he knows, because it couldn't be love for him.
"It's for both of you," she says quickly, "and thank you for being there for her. Every parent... Well, every loving parent worries about their children when they know they are going to pass. I so wanted to be able to leave her something, and the only home I could buy for her was in the mouth of Hell itself. It wasn't exactly the kind of inheritance I'd always planned on leaving for my daughter. But she has you now, so I know she's happy and... as safe as any Vampire Slayer can be." She smiles and is still rolling her eyes when she vanishes from his sight.
He muses over her words as he begins to walk home, head down and shoulders sunk again. "What was for both of us?" he whispers to himself, and then actually jumps like he hasn't in centuries at the answer that comes.
"My love."
He smiles. "I love you too, Joyce. Miss you. You were the closest thing I ever actually knew to a mum after my mum..." He lets his words trail off, though a part of him somehow knows instinctively that she's still listening. Perhaps she's always been listening. But he doesn't want to dwell on the past. He actually has a bright future now to which to look forward, and he wants to get home to Buffy soon and start that future tonight -- even if she won't get the ring tonight. He's going to make everything perfect for her when he proposes. He'll find a way now that he's got her mum's blessing. Most of all, he knows as his old, dead heart warms, he'll find a way to love her right because he at last is loved and not even just by Buffy although there's still nothing in any world that could mean more to him than her love.
The End
