Archive of Our Own ^beta

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

All dialogue between Buffy and Angel is from S3E10 Amends, except for Angel’s last line.  Every damn stupid word.

Trigger warning for attempted suicide as per this episode. While Buffy comes off as dismissive, thoughts of suicide should always be taken seriously.

Christmas Miracle

Buffy walked away from Angel.  It hurt so much seeing him, especially when she didn’t get the opportunity to prepare beforehand.  Bumping into him on the street while doing something pleasant like Christmas shopping didn’t give her time to gird herself.

Gird.  What a weird word.

But all the weird words in the world couldn’t distract her from the pain she felt when seeing Angel.

It was so hard doing the right thing.  She wanted to fight, but how could you fight a curse?  It wasn’t like they could ever have a life together.  Not a real life.  That soul of his was too slippery, and without a soul…Well, evil wasn’t something they could change with couple’s counseling.

Not that she wasn’t willing to try to build something together with him.  She was willing to do whatever it took to make them work, but that was an impossible fantasy.

A sparkle from the gutter caught her eye, and she bent down to pick it up.  It was a Christmas ornament about the size of her palm.  It was a mirror surrounded by a silver filigree frame that looked vaguely Victorian.

She and Angel were never going to be a couple who did couply things like celebrate Christmas.  They were never going to buy family gifts and decorate a family tree or have family dinner together.

Mostly because vampires didn’t eat people food.  But Buffy would be willing to warm up blood for Angel so he could sit down at the table with their family for Christmas dinner.

A family was out too.  It’s not like they could ever make a family together.  Buffy didn’t even know if she wanted kids, but she knew kids with Angel was impossible.

She guessed the Scoobs were their family.  Their found family.  Except Angel didn’t really get along with them.  She couldn’t imagine Angel and Xander sitting around a table together drinking eggnog.

Not that Angel drank nog.

She swiped her thumb over the silver frame, feeling something etched across it.  She tilted it so she could see it under the light.  The colorful Christmas lights made the whole ornament sparkle, blinding her momentarily.

“Christmas Miracle,” she read.  At the same time her face was reflected back at her.

“Cute.”

It was something you would give your person to let them know that they were the real Christmas Miracle in their life.

Mad at herself, at Angel, at life in general, Buffy shoved the ornament in her coat pocket and promptly forgot about it.

~****~

Buffy crested the hill, panting from her frantic run through the undergrowth.  A tall, broad-shoulder form stood at the ridge, overlooking Sunnydale, and Buffy felt the tightness in her chest resolve a fraction. She was in time.  She could save him.

Saving people was her job.  It’s what she did, and she never got a day off, not even on Christmas Eve.  She understood that being the Slayer meant sacrificing more than just her life or her personal freedom.  It meant sacrificing pieces of herself that she would never get back.

She’d rather be at home right now, making awkward small talk with Faith while drinking cocoa her mother made.  Her mother made the best cocoa.  But instead, she had to fight off some creepy blind dudes and listen to the puffed-up bragging of the monster of the week, and that made her mad.  Maybe a little bitter.

Because instead of spending Christmas Eve with her family, she had to save Christmas.  Worse, she had to save a grown man from himself.  Because the part that was really needling that small bitter seed deep in her chest was that Angel wasn’t really in any danger from anything except himself and his ‘woe is me’ big feels.

Why did loving someone have to be so hard?  So damn painful?

“Angel.”

He briefly glanced in her direction before looking back to the rooftops.  She walked towards him, her breath coming in little puffs.  Now that she had stopped running, she felt the cold start to wiggle its way inside her.  Slithering in like evil does to souls too world-weary to fight back.

Buffy felt world-weary.

“I bet half the kids down there are already awake.  Lying in their beds…sneaking downstairs…waiting for the day.”

Buffy remembered being one of those children, creeping downstairs in the early dawn hours, gleeful at the day yet to begin.  How much simpler life had been back then.  When her biggest worry was making her dad cranky by waking him up too soon.

Mom always woke with grace.  As if the best part of Christmas morning for her was witnessing how excited her child was to celebrate the day.

Buffy looked out over the Spanish tiled rooftops and the light bedazzled palm tree fronds.  The world appeared differently when you looked down at it instead of being immersed in the middle of it.  Distant and untouchable.

If she wasn’t a part of the world, did she have to save it?  The thought made her frown, and glance at Angel. Was that how he felt?  Apart from the world, and therefore not responsible for it?

The glitter of Christmas lights caught her eye, and she thought of the brightly decorated tree that waited for her at home, and a pang struck her deep.  How she longed for a Christmas morning where there was no heartache or suffering.  Maybe someday she would be the smiling mother sipping coffee while her kids gleefully opened the presents she had painstakingly purchased and wrapped knowing they would make them happy, a loving husband at her side, watching with just as much contentment.

How she wished for that Christmas morning she would never have.

“Angel, please.  I need for you to get inside.  There’s only a few minutes left.”

Last year, before Angelus, she had indulged in so many fantasies.  Nothing outrageous, just boring hum-drum dreams of a future filled with a man who loved her and a family never touched by the awfulness of her life.

She thought she could have had that with Angel.  Part of her still wanted that, even though she knew it was wrong.  Apocalyptic level wrong, but, oh God, how she still longed for it.

“I know.  I can smell the sunrise long before it comes.”

Buffy felt that traitorous simmer of anger in the pit of her stomach again.  What was she doing here, saving a man from himself?  A man who gave absolutely zero thought in how his actions harmed others.  Harmed her, the supposed love of his life.  Shouldn’t he give just one damn thought to her?

She pushed it down and reached for compassion instead.  The First Evil had done a real number on Angel’s head.  He just didn’t realize it yet.

“I don’t have time to explain this.  You just have to trust me,” Buffy pleaded.  “That thing that was haunting you…”  She reached out her hand, expecting him to take it.  She asked him to trust her, and if he loved her…

“It wasn’t haunting me.  It was showing me,” he said with the profound arrogance of a man who thought he knew better than anyone else.

“Showing you?”  Rejected, she dropped her hand.  All he had to do was show her a small fraction of trust.  The same trust she showed him every day by loving him, despite his past.

“What I am.”

“Were,” Buffy insisted.  She had to insist.  Had to believe.  If she didn’t believe that he could be a better man, that he was a better man, then what did that say about her loving him?

She knew people changed.  Look how much she had changed in just the last few years.  She went from a vapid little girl to a warrior woman who saved the world time and again. 

Change wasn’t easy.  It was hard.  Life was hard, and like life, love was a struggle.  You just had to fight for it.  A small, fractious piece of her wondered why love, such a beautiful and magical thing, had to be so hard.

“And ever shall be.  I wanted to know why I was back.  Now I do.”

Heat bloomed in her chest.  Why didn’t he fight back? Buffy couldn’t fathom just lying down and dying.  Not when there was still life in you.  Not when there were people in the world who loved you.  But here he was, willing to give up the ghost. And why? because some haunty ghost thing said so?

It stank of cowardice and weak-mindedness, and all those traitorous, wrong words she shouldn’t think of when she thought of Angel, her stoic champion.

“You don’t know.  Some great evil takes credit for bringing you back and you buy it?  You just give up?”

Seriously, who does that?  Buffy may be young, but she did know certain truths.  Men asking for help from little girls were suspect, don’t let them take you to a secondary location, and don’t believe the words of self-professed bad guys, claiming to be the big cheese of evil.

“I can’t do it again, Buffy.  I can’t become a killer.”

“Then fight it!” she screamed, veins in her temple throbbing until it felt like her head would explode.  Did he not think she understood what it was to fight your nature? How hard it was to push back against your worst self and reach for the impossibility of a better you? She fought against being the vapid little girl she had been back in Los Angeles until she changed herself into something more. Something better.

“It’s too hard.”  Pain washed over his handsome features, his shoulders folding inward until he shrunk, no longer looking like the champion she knew him to be.  He looked broken.  Defeated.

White light peaked over the edge of the valley and Buffy’s skin prickled in warning.  She didn’t have time for Angel’s existential crisis.  They needed to get inside before he burned.  If he wanted to brood on the meaning of his life, then let him do it in his great big pretentious mansion where he was safe from the sun.

“Angel, please, you have to get inside.”

Angel refused to look at her, staring off at the distance, not even seeing the town spread out below them—standing so far apart from the world—so far above it.

“It told me to kill you.”  He sounded tortured.  Gutted.  “You were in the dream.  You know.”

Buffy instinctively took a step away.  That horrible, awful dream.  It started out so lovely.  So beautiful.  Then deep, gut-wrenching horror.  She couldn’t face it.  Could bring herself to examine too deeply.  To love someone completely, yet be horrified by them.  To be violated by them.  It was the worst betrayal.

“It told me to lose my soul in you and become a monster again.”

“I know what it told you!  What does it matter?”  She slapped her palms against her thighs.  She didn’t want to talk about this.  She didn’t want to think about what he had done to her in her dreams.  What he had done to thousands of girls before her.

“Because I wanted to!  Because I want you so badly!  I want to take comfort in you, and I know it’ll cost me my soul.  And a part of me doesn’t care.”

She hated when he spoke like this.  Like she had zero agency in her own actions.  He wasn’t the only one in their relationship, and she knew what he was implying would never happen.  No matter how weak she felt, or how much she enjoyed his kisses, she knew they could never make love again, so his losing his soul in her could never happen.

Angel crumbled forward, sobbing, and Buffy was nonplussed.  She had never seen him so broken.  So tortured.  She wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know what to say or do.  He said he wanted to take comfort in her, but they weren’t a couple who did that.  They didn’t comfort each other.  They loved and fought and struggled, but they didn’t comfort.

“Look, I’m weak.  I’ve never been anything else.  It’s not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy.  It’s the man."

Did he think he was the only person in the history of ever to fumble?  To trip and fall and struggle to stand back up to fight.  It was the struggle that was the hardest, but getting back up is what you did.  Giving up just wasn’t a possibility.  Giving up meant someone else would suffer for her failure.

“You’re weak.  Everybody is.  Everybody fails.  Maybe this evil did bring you back, but if it did, it’s because it needs you.  And that means you can hurt it.”

He could fight it.  That’s what was important.  Getting up to fight another day.  Saving the world even when all you wanted to do was sit by a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with your family.

Anger boiled over.  Why couldn't he just do this one thing for her?  Why did he have to make it so hard?

“Angel, you have the power to do real good, to make amends.  But if you die now, then all you ever were was a monster.”

He turned away from her and desperation crawled up her throat.  Dawn was coming.

“Angel, please,” she begged, “the sun is coming up!”  She got it, she did.  He was having a real crisis of faith, but what he was doing was rash.  You didn’t just kill yourself because you were having some hard feels—because life wasn’t working out the way you wanted it to.  If that was the case, she would have walked into a set of fangs after her Calling.  Because being fifteen and being told she was the human sacrifice needed to keep the world spinning?  Not great for the feels.

She totally understood where he was coming from because they had a fundamental connection, and if she could just get him to come back to the mansion with her, they could talk it out.

“Just go.”  He looked up at the lightening horizon.  He was so set.  So goddamn sure of himself.  So dismissive of her.  Did he not give one thought to how his actions affected others? Affected her? How he was hurting her? 

“I won’t!”

She wouldn’t leave him.  She wouldn’t let him do this to her.  Wouldn’t let him destroy her like what they had together was nothing.  Like she was nothing.

“What, do you think this is simple?  You think there’s an easy answer?  You can never understand what I’ve done!  Now go!”

He treated her like she was stupid.  Like she couldn’t understand the monster he was.  And yeah, she couldn’t really understand all that he'd done, but she had experienced enough of it—experienced him in all his brutal, horrifying glory. 

She wasn’t stupid.  She knew it wasn’t simple.  Love never was.  Love was twisted and complicated and it hurt you over and over again, but that didn’t mean you stopped trying.  You just didn’t give up because it was too hard!

“You are not staying here!”  She grabbed his arm, intent on dragging him back to the mansion if she had to.  If he wouldn’t save himself, then she would do it for him.  Because that’s what she did.  She saved people, even from themselves.

“I said, leave!” He roared, jerking his arm free.  She stumbled back, but quickly regained her feet.  His roar startled her, but only for a split second, before her anger rushed forward in a red wave.  She was so sick and tired of his shit.  Of his selfishness.

She got it, okay!  He was going through this great big thing, and yeah, maybe she couldn’t understand it all, but she was here.  She was willing to go through it with him so they could get to the other side together.  But they couldn’t do that if he was dead!

Her fist whipped out, connecting with his nose.  Angel barely flinched. Instead, he rushed her and threw her hard to the ground.  She fell face first, her head bouncing off a rock.

She groaned and blinked, and realized her hands were hot.  Not just hot.  Burning.

She swayed on her feet, blinking blurringly down at the hot cookie sheet she held with a tea towel wrapped around her hands.  She quickly placed it on the counter, frowning down at it.

She touched her forehead, expecting to find blood, but her fingers came back clean. She didn't know where she was, or what was happening.

She looked back at the cookie sheet she'd just put down and recognized the little sugary-brown people-shaped goodness right away. Gingerbread cookies. They smelled wonderful.  They were her absolute favorite during Christmas.  Her mom would bake batches of them then sit her down at the table with frosting and candy bits so Buffy could decorate them to her heart’s content.

Above her, she could hear the squeals of children.  A boy and a girl by the sound of it.  The girl was very unhappy with the boy.

Buffy tracked the sound of racing feet as they crossed the floor and pounded down stairs.  Buffy turned around to see a little girl about eight years old, dressed in a bright pink sweater and sweat pants race down the stairs.

Her dark hair was pulled up into two adorable puffballs wrapped with pink ribbons.  Her big brown eyes were filled with what Buffy was sure were crocodile tears, as she launched herself off the landing and straight into Buffy, wrapping her thin arms around her waist.

“Mama, Nibs wanted to play Avengers, and I told him I was playing My Little Pony, and he said we could have a war, ponies against super heroes and I said no, and he said My Little Ponies were stupid!” she wailed.

Buffy stood stock-still in the girl’s arms, her arms hovering away from their bodies.

“I was just playing.  You don’t have to go tattling to Mama.”

A boy rounded the newel post and stopped dead, staring at Buffy with red eyes .  He was about ten years old, had curly brown hair from which two small red horns sprouted.  He wore dark pants, a white shirt and dark-rimmed glasses. Aside from the red eyes and horns, he looked like Dexter from the Cartoon Network. Kinda nerdy, definitely adorable.

“JoJo, come here,” he ordered his little sister.  In a heartbeat, he had gone from big brother who was terrorizing his little sister to big brother who was dead set on protecting her.

The little girl ignored him, and wallowed further into Buffy.  “Mama, make him be nice to me.”

“That’s not mama, JoJo.”  The boy had one hand wrapped around the newel post, the other held out to his sister.  He looked so serious, so freaking freaked out, it made Buffy feel guilty for scaring him.

The front door of the cabin opened, bringing with it a cold gust of wind.  Startled, Buffy whipped her head towards the door, briefly taking in the comfortable living room with its tall, crazily decorated Christmas tree, and mass of windows behind it, showcasing a winter wonderland view.

“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”

“Language!”  Buffy couldn’t help to say.  There were children present after all.

The man chuckled as he entered the house.  He wore blue jeans and a blue henley, a padded plaid jacket over top of it.  In his arms he held a load of firewood.

When he turned back from closing the door, Buffy nearly lost her breath.  Spike stood in front of her, snowflakes in his loosely curling hair.

And holy freaking wow, did he look fine.  All domesticated and rugged, and an easy smile that made his whole face look young.

He stomped snow off his boots on the rug in front of the door before looking in her direction.  Once he saw her, he stiffened.  His eyes darting to her, to the girl wrapped around her waist, and finally to the boy at the stairs.

“Slayer,” he said slowly, almost if he calming a skittish mare.  “You’re here.”

“Spike!” she spat.  “I should have known you were behind this somehow.”

Her tone was so harsh it startled the little girl into leaning back to stare up at her.  Her big brown eyes widened.

“You’re not Mama,” she whispered in a small voice, her lower lip trembling. Buffy could feel her little body trembling as well.

“JoJo.”  The boy stretched his hand out further, almost like he was reaching into a raging river from the safety of the bank, desperate to save his sister from being swept away.

Buffy guessed that made her the raging river.

The little girl slowly unwound herself from Buffy and stepped back so her brother could grab her.  He pulled her close and wrapped a protective arm around her chest.  Neither child looked away from her.

Buffy glared at them.  How dare they act like she was some sort of monster?  They were making her feel uncomfortable and awkward.  She glared extra hard at the boy’s horns.  She couldn’t see anything demonic about the little girl but that didn’t mean she wasn’t.  They were with Spike after all.

“Slayer, don’t go being rough on the sprogs.  They haven’t done nothing.”

She switched her glare to Spike.  His grip on the logs had loosened, like he was ready to drop them at any moment and spring forward. To do what exactly?  Attack her?

She fisted her hands, leaning forward on the balls of her feet, ready to meet him.

“What are sprogs?  Some sort of demon?” she demanded.

Spike very slowly leaned forward, dropping the wood in the box by the door.

“Just kids, Slayer, that’s all.”

She looked at the kids suspiciously.  She had never seen demon children other than that Collin kid, but that had been a child turned into a vampire.

“Let them go on upstairs and I’ll explain everything to you.”  Spike said calmly, soothingly.  He took a step forward, his hands raised harmlessly in the air and Buffy frowned. 

Immediately, Spike stopped.  He nodded at the boy.  “Nibs, take your sister now.”

Spike’s whole body was taut.  He was using a tone of voice she had heard from him once before.  When she held a stake to Drusilla’s heart.  It sounded almost…scared?  She glanced again at the children then back to Spike, when it suddenly hit her like a freight train what scared him.

“I would never hurt children!” she screeched in outrage.  She couldn’t bring herself to kill that Collin kid even knowing he was just a dead thing with a demon inhabiting his body.

JoJo burst into tears.  Not the crocodile ones from earlier, designed to get her way and her brother in trouble, but honest-to-goodness terrified tears.

“I want my Mama!” she wailed.  Nibs tried to pull her back but she wouldn’t be moved.

Buffy panicked.  She wasn’t the one who made kids cry!  She was the good guy.  The hero!

She glanced around, frantically searching for a solution.  Seeing the cookies, she reached for them, only to burn her fingertips on the hot pan.  She yelped and the little girl behind her cried harder.

Undeterred, Buffy nabbed a spatula from the cute Christmas-themed utensil holder and scraped a still-crumbly cookie off the sheet.  She broke the arm and failed miserably trying to mush it back together.  Hissing, she wrapped its little cookie-corpse in a paper towel and thrust it towards the girl to pacify her.

“Careful, it’s still hot,” she told JoJo.

The girl sniffled, looking at the cookie greedily.  “Mama says we can’t have cookies until after lunch.”

“Well, Mama isn’t here.”  The little girl’s face scrunched up for another good bawl, and Buffy panicked.  “But she’ll be back soon! Until then you can have as many cookies you want.”

Behind her, Spike coughed in what sounded like disagreement.  The little girl cast a cautious glance toward Spike.  “Can I, Daddy?”

Buffy damn near dropped the cookie.

“What the Slayer says goes.”

The girl tentatively reached out, but her older brother held her back, forcing Buffy to bend forward to hand the girl the cookie.  Once she took it, Buffy retrieved another and offered it to the boy.

The boy looked towards his father, and even though Buffy knew it wasn’t possible that they were biologically related, the boy looked so much like Spike in that moment it made her heart pinch.  She had seen that look on Spike’s face when protecting Dru.

The boy had come down the stairs intent on torturing his sister, and had done a complete 180 after seeing Buffy.  He went from a boy teasing his baby sister to a boy willing to die to protect her.  It was so much like Spike that Buffy could barely breathe with the epiphany of it.

Spike nodded and the boy took the cookie, watching Buffy carefully the entire time.  Once they had their prizes, the boy led the girl up the stairs.  Halfway up the girl stopped, looking back at her daddy.

“When will Mama be back?”

“She’ll be back soon, luv,” Spike answered.

Buffy shot him a suspicious look.  He seemed awful certain about that.

The little girl’s face turned to outrage and she stomped her little foot.  “But we are supposed to decorate cookies, and watch The Grinch and we get to open one present tonight!  Mama promised!”

“We can still do that, precious.”

“No, we can’t.  Not without Mama.  Its tradicious.”

“Tradition,” Nibs corrected, subtly pulling on his sister’s hand to get her to follow him up the stairs.

Buffy felt bad, ruining their Christmas Eve.  Even if this was just some really weird fever dream.

“And what about tomorrow?  We can’t open presents without Mama.”

“This is your mama.  Just a lot of years before you and your brother were born.”

Buffy staggered under the weight of that statement.   There was no way that she was the children’s mama, and no way in hell would Spike be her baby daddy.

Besides, they looked nothing like her!

She rounded on Spike, fury spitting from her eyes. “Don’t lie!  I don’t know what you’re up to, Spike, but I’m going to beat it out of you.”

“You’re not Mama!”  the little girl accused, full-throated.  “You’re mean.  Mama’s not mean.  She makes the best cocoa and cookies and gives the best hugs.  You give bad hugs!”

Buffy was little aghast at that.  She gave good hugs.  The bestest of hugs.

“JoJo, go upstairs,” Spike said sternly, and Buffy could see real terror flicker in his eyes.  He really was worried that she’d do something to hurt the kids.  Maybe not physically, but he was worried she would say something hurtful, and Buffy knew from experience that sometimes that kind of hurt was way worse than a punch to the face.

JoJo huffed and stomped up the stairs, Nibs in her wake.  The boy cast a worried look over his shoulder at his father, and Spike nodded to him.

Once they disappeared, Buffy turned all her attention to Spike.

“Take a seat, Slayer, and I’ll explain everything.”  He motioned towards the couch in front of a huge fireplace.

For the first time, Buffy really took in her surroundings.  They were in a comfortably-appointed log cabin. This wasn’t some cobbled together Old West affair, but something out of those luxury magazines that had photo shoots of ski lodges in Aspen.

It wasn’t very big.  A good-sized living room with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a beautiful, snow-covered view of wilderness.  It should have made the room cold, but there was a blazing fire and the floor beneath Buffy’s bare feet was heated.

Garland was strung all through the cabin, and even wound its way up the banister and above her head.  The kitchen was small but modern, with stainless steel appliances and lacquered butcher block countertops.

Buffy rubbed her hands down her thighs and realized she was dressed similar to JoJo, in a soft pink velour bottom and top.

Spike slowly made his way to the plush couch, sinking down at one end, keeping his hands visible the whole time.  He moved like she was a wild animal and was only one sudden move away from being startled into causing chaos.

Buffy took a couple steps forward but refused to sit.  She cased the room for exits.  There was the front door, of course.  The windows looked thick and might be hard to break, but if she was desperate enough to get away, she figured she could muscle through.  She glanced over her shoulder.  There was a doorway behind the kitchen, which she figured led to a bathroom, maybe a bedroom. 

She didn’t know what was upstairs.  Not that she would ever go that way.  She wouldn’t lead danger to children, demonic or not.

She squared her gaze on Spike, who watched her from the couch, hands loose on his knees.

“You don’t really think I’d hurt kids, do you?”

“No, not really, but I don’t know you that well at this age. I do remember you being very much, 'slay first, ask questions later'.”

Buffy was insulted.  Deeply.

“And you want me to believe that we’re married?  Married people are supposed to know each other inside out.”

Spike leaned back, a smug little smile flirting at the corners of his mouth.  “What makes you think we’re married?”

Buffy was momentarily stumped.  “But they called me Mama and you Daddy.”

His flirty grin grew.  “Having sprogs together doesn’t mean you have to be married.”

Buffy knew that but everything about this screamed happy little family.  That meant married, right?  She wouldn’t just shack up with some guy and have kids with him without doing the whole married-and-happily-ever-after thing.

Not some guy.  Spike.  She would never marry Spike.  She sure as hell wouldn’t have sprogs with him.

Spike shrugged a shoulder, letting her off the hook, but his grin stayed firmly in place.  “My wife is much older than you.  Not as quick to snap to wrong conclusions.”

“I don’t snap to wrong conclusions,” she may have snapped, while crossing her arms over her chest.  “My conclusions are very logical and conclusiony.”

Spike snorted, which pissed her off.  He was making fun of her, she could tell.

“That doesn’t explain why you’d think I’d hurt babies, Spike.  I’m not a monster.”  The like you wasn’t said, but it was heard loud and clear.

He glanced towards the upstairs, his face openly vulnerable in a way that made her heart leap in her chest.  “I know my wife.  Spent years getting to know her.”  He looked back at her, blue eyes intense.  “Like I said, the you of right now, I don’t know that well.  We only really talked twice, once during Acathla and at the Magic Shop.”

To her, their encounter at the Magic Shop had only been a few weeks ago.  He had crashed and bashed into her life, ripping it apart, ripping her friends apart, then left in a flurry of black leather and cigarette smoke to go find his dark dove, Drusilla, to torture her into loving him again.

That vampire was not the same man who sat across from her.  He didn’t even look the same in his human, every day clothing.  He looked like something off a western novel's cover.  A romantic one, where the heroine was grasping helplessly onto the arm of the hero with her heaving bosom nearly bursting out of her bodice.

Buffy’s bosom neither heaved nor burst.

“And I might think you’d never hurt children, even now, as young as you are, but those are my children, Slayer.  My life.  I’d die for them.  Kill for them.  I’d even fight you for them.  So yeah, I’m a little wary.”

The knot in her throat wouldn’t go away no matter how much she tried to swallow it down.  She had always instinctively known that about Spike.  He fought for who he loved.  He’d never give up on them.  Never lay down on some hillside and wait for the sun to take him because it was just too hard to keep fighting.  Spike would never stop fighting because like her, he knew people were depending on him to get back up on his feet and keep swinging.

She looked over his shoulder, out the picture window at the beautiful landscape beyond.  It looked like they were somewhere up north.  Somewhere quaint and lovely, like upstate New York or New Hampshire.  Somewhere the leaves turned to fire in the fall, and crystal ice formed on the eaves of old farm houses in the winter.

“Are you human?” she whispered.

That question startled a small laugh from him.  “Why would you ask me that, luv?”

“It’s light outside.”

Him being human would explain everything.  The happy family memories strewn around.  The cookies, the trees, the freaking sprogs.

How handsome he looked in the light.

It was some ancient prophecy or a crazy witch’s spell gone wonky.  Maybe Dru, in some dark, mental downward spiral, cursed him with a soul.

He glanced out the window, then to the wood he had brought in.  “It’s overcast enough for me to move about.”

Was that a thing?  If it was gloomy enough, could vampires run around in the day?  If she and Angel moved to one of those wintery Midwest states, could they play pretend?

“What about when it’s not overcast out?” she motioned to the glass.  On a bright day it would drench the whole cabin with light.

“Necro-tempered.  Filters out those harmful UVs.”

“Sounds expensive.”  In fact, the whole place looked expensive.  Something far outside her parents' tax bracket for sure.

“We do alright.”

“What did you do, murder and rob some millionaire?  Is there a body buried underneath the house somewhere?”

She propped her hands on her hips, glaring at him.  He returned her look and there was something about it.  Something sad.  Pitying.

“What?” she demanded.  “What are you looking at?”

“I had forgotten this about you.  How damaged you are.”

“I’m not damaged!” she spat.  And the hits just kept coming.  How many times could she be insulted in one afternoon?

“Sure you are.  Barely eighteen and betrayed by every single person who ever said they loved you.”

Her hands slid off her hips to hang limply at her sides.  Wow, that was the blow to end all blows.

“What do you know of it?” she whispered.

“Only what you’ve told me over the years.  How your parents sent you to the mental health institution, all the times your friends screwed you over, fucking Giles and that goddamn ritual…,” he trailed off, eyeing her real hard before saying, “And of course I had a front row seat to Angelus.”

The thought to ask him to explain about Giles and some ritual—which in Buffy’s experience, rituals usually meant badness—completely left her brain when he mentioned Angelus.  The biggest betrayal of her life.

Sure, her parents sent her to the institution, but she could understand it.  She said vampires, and they freaked out.  It wasn’t like she had tried to prove it to them, and while she felt resentment that they didn’t believe her, the way parents should, the way she swore she would if her kids ever came to her saying crazy things, she could understand it.

Angelus was just something she could never quite wrap her head around.  How could he love her one day and not the next?  The only way she could justify it to herself was to separate Angel and Angelus into two people, and that demarcation between them was that wistful, ethereal impossibility of a soul.  That simple but so very complex thing that explained why Angel loved her and Angelus did not.

“Do you have a soul?”

She would have thought the question would have startled him.  It had startled her.  She didn’t know why she asked.  It just blurted out of her.

“Still hung up on Angel right now, aren’t you?”  His grin was so young and carefree it made her blink.  Then she got mad.  His words sounded like judgment. She freaking hated judgment.  That’s all anyone ever did was judge her.  Her friends and family all judged her about her relationship with Angel.  Yeah, she knew it was wrong, but it was love.  Love could never be wrong.

“Do you?” she demanded.

He leaned back on the couch, putting his arm across the back.  She had unconsciously moved deeper into the room, and the farther she came away from the stairs, the more relaxed he became.

“No, luv.  I don’t.”

That just could not be true.  Here he sat, bold as you pleased, claiming to be married to her, or in some sort of demented sick relationship with her, claiming he’d die for his children.  She looked around the room, so beautiful and perfect, looking like every fantasy she'd ever had about a future she’d never get, with a family that would never exist—and all she felt was rage at the unfairness of it all.

How could he say he didn’t have a soul, while giving her older self everything she ever dreamed of when Angel—with a soul!—hadn’t even asked her about her dreams of the future?  Wouldn’t even talk about the possibility of a future with her?

She thrust that aside.  She couldn’t think about that right now because right now she was supposed to be on the hillside moments before dawn, saving Angel, not here in this cozy winter cabin gaily decorated for a happy family Christmas.

“What is going on, Spike?”  She looked around at the garland and mistletoe tucked up in the rafters near the kitchen.  The seven-foot-tall Christmas tree stuffed to the gills with ornaments.  Handmade ones and fancy store-bought ones.  White doves and crimson cardinals.  Swathes of colored ribbon and strung popcorn.  In her mind’s eye, she could envision a loving family laughing while decorating the tree, drinking cocoa and listening to Christmas music.  Something she had never even really seen in her own home, her own mother preferring stately decorations to rambunctious, messy ones.

“Is this real?” she asked quietly.  Was she really here, or was this a dream?  How hard had she hit her head when Angel had pushed her away? Laying hands on her in way she would have never accepted from anyone else other than a vampire lover.  The love of her life.

She'd punched him first, she rationalized.

Spike patted the couch beside him.  A simple gold ring gleamed on his finger.  It hurt her somewhere deep inside to see it.  “Take a seat, and I’ll try to tell you what you told me.”

She looked at him sharply, but he remained calm, his expression edging towards pitying again.

She perched at the edge as far away as she could get from him.  He leaned back into the arm, giving her as much space as he possibly could.

Unable to look at him, and that gold ring, she stared at the tree.  There were so many presents they couldn’t all fit on the red velvet skirt.  They spilled out across the floor, haphazardly piled.  Tomorrow would be Christmas morning, and the two kiddos upstairs would be in absolute raptures.

Above the mantel, four stockings were hung.  Names emblazoned across the cuffs.  JoJo, Nibs, Mama, and Daddy.  The kids’ were stuffed full of course, but Buffy blinked to see the Mama and Daddy stockings were full as well.

She vaguely remembered Christmas when her parents were still married.  Her stocking and her father’s had always been stuffed full, but looking back she realized her mom’s always had barely anything in it.

Something painful struck her when she realized that her mom hadn’t even bothered to hang a stocking for herself this year.  Only Buffy’s hung above their never-used fireplace, and it was stuffed full and even had a beautiful bow with flowing ribbons.

“I only know what you told me a few years ago.  You wanted to prepare me for this day.  You weren’t sure exactly which Christmas it would be, but you said you’d show up and stay the day.”

Buffy focused on Spike.  She couldn’t look at all the happy around her.  “How can I believe this is real?”

His grin was soft and patient.  “There isn’t a thing in the world I can say that’s going to convince you that this is real and not some sort of trick.”

He was right.  A naïve Slayer was a dead Slayer.  She couldn’t afford to let her guard down, or be drawn in by his lying words.  She knew Spike.  He was a trickster down to his soulless core.

“The only thing Buffy Summers believes in is action.  You’ve been lied to too many times.”

That knot in her throat was back, making it hard for her to breath.

“I need to get out of here.”  She shot up from the couch.  She needed to move, she needed to escape.

“Wait!” he reached for her and she struck out.  Spike barely dodged a punch to the nose.

“Don’t try to stop me!”

“I’m not.”  He held up his hands in surrender.  “Know I can’t stop you from doing anything you’ve got a mind to.”

He edged away from her towards the coat closet.  “Just don’t want you running outside in your bare feet, Slayer.  Damned cold outside.”  He set a pair of snow boots in front of her.  They were purple with pink laces and white fur peeking out.  She wiggled her bare toes before grabbing up the boots and putting them on.  When she stood up, he held out a warm looking pink North Face jacket.

She snatched it away from him.  No way was she going to present her back to him so he could put her jacket on for her.

He shoved his hands into his blue jeans, looking at her with a troubled frown on his face.  “You want me to drive you into town?”

“No,” she snapped.  “It’s probably a trap.”

“There’s that childhood trauma again,” he muttered so lowly she nearly didn’t hear, but she did and it made her heart squeeze.

She ignored him and marched to the door.  When she opened it, cold air rushed in, burning her cheeks.  She thought Sunnydale had gotten nippy while she had stood on that hill overlooking the town, begging Angel to save his own life, but that was nothing compared to this.  It really was as cold as a witch’s tit.

She drew herself up and marched out into the snow.  Fat flakes were falling all around her, settling on her lashes and melting on her warm cheeks.  Squaring her shoulders, she headed for a gap in the trees where she figured the driveway led to a road.

Her fingers grew stiff.  Her breath came in pants from struggling through the wet snow.  Her lungs burned from the cold air.  She spent about five minutes trudging through the shin-high snow before she turned right back around.

Feeling cold and ornery, she slammed the door hard enough to make it rattle, but because her mother raised her right she stamped off the snow onto the rug so she wouldn't track it on the hardwood floors.

Spike was at the window.  It was clear he had watched her the whole time.  She wondered, had she gotten far enough away, whether he'd have followed her to make sure she was safe?  She rather thought he would have.

“Take me to town,” she demanded.  He raised a dark brow at her imperious tone, but she ignored that too.  Just like she ignored all her uncomfortable feelings.

“Sure.  What are you hoping to find there?”

“A phone.”

She had scoped the whole place and she hadn’t seen one phone.  Spike reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver rectangle holding it out to her.

“What’s that?”

“A phone,” he answered.

Buffy had seen mobile phones before.  They were usually black and shaped like a small block.  They were heavy, too.  She took this one, surprised at how light it was.  She looked at it but its shiny screen remained blank.  It didn’t open anyway she could see and it didn’t have any buttons.

“How am I supposed to use this?”

Both his brows shot up then his grin turned shit-eating.  “Fuck me, I forgot how long ago you’re from.

She narrowed her eyes and his grin just got wider.  Without taking the phone from her, he swiped his finger across the display and it lit up.  There were all kinds of little squares on the screen, but at the bottom was a handset square she recognized.  She touched it and a bunch of numbers popped up.

“Just press the buttons to dial.  But Buffy…” at his questioning tone she looked up.  “Who are you trying to call?”

“Giles, my mom, Willow, Xander, someone.”

She punched in Giles number and got a weird message saying the number didn’t exist.  She tried her mother.

“Buffy, those numbers haven’t existed for years.”

She got the same message.  She threw the foreign phone to the ground.  It probably wasn’t even a real phone.

“This is all a trick.”

“Why would this be a trick?  What would be the point?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.  Take me to town and I’ll find my way back to Sunnydale.”

One thing she knew for absolutely certain was that she wasn’t in Sunnydale.  Whatever weird thing that was going on didn’t matter.  She had to get home.  She had to go save Angel.  Unless he had already burned because he had been too stubborn to take his stupid ass off that hilltop after she disappeared.  If she had disappeared, and this wasn’t some fever dream she was having because she hit her head too hard.

She wondered if Angel had stopped his pity party long enough to carry her to safety, or if he just roasted while standing above her, letting her get coated in his ashes.

That bitter feeling in her stomach rose up again.

“Alright, luv.  Whatever you want.”

He picked up his phone before moving towards the kitchen, turning off the oven she'd left on.  The cookies were still on the sheet, and she bet the bottoms were scorched now.  Even burnt they’d still taste good.

“Nibs,” Spike called up the stairs.  The boy’s small face appeared between the posts.

“I’m going to take the Slayer to town.  Watch after your sister.”

The boy glanced towards the window.  “You’ll be gone for hours in this weather.”

The snow was coming down harder now.  Spike's face was pinched when he looked back to his son.  Guilt got squirmy in Buffy’s guts.

“You know what to do if the lights go out, yeah?”

JoJo’s face appeared next to her brother’s.  “You’re not leaving us, are you?”

Spike shifted, taking something from his pocket.  Buffy realized he hadn’t taken his jacket off from earlier.  “You know how to drive yet, Slayer?”

Buffy looked to the black rectangle in his outstretched hands.  Was that supposed to be some sort of key?  He was just going to hand over his car to her?

“Not really,” she replied.  She really needed to work on that whole driving thing.

Spike curled his fingers around the rectangle, his shoulders drooping.

“You’ll be safe as houses,” he told the children.  “Just don’t go turning on the stove.  And no rough-housing while we’re out.”

The two children exchanged a look.  “Okay, Daddy,” JoJo said hesitantly.  Nibs just stared at Buffy, the expression on his face far too intense for any ten-year-old.

Buffy followed Spike as he led them outside.  Before she shut the door, she heard JoJo say, “You know how to start the lights, right?”

Buffy assumed she meant a generator.

“Dad showed me once.”  Nibs’ tone did not inspire confidence.

Spike led her to a huge truck with a bench seat in the back to fit their four-person family.  Buffy needed to use the step to haul herself up into the tall vehicle. 

She shoved her hands under her rear end to warm them, and promptly jabbed herself in the butt, darn near bruising herself.  She pulled out her hand, and her mouth gaped.  On her fingers was the biggest square-cut canary diamond she ever saw surrounded by smaller diamonds.

She had been so het up about finding herself in crazy town, she hadn’t even noticed how much more her hand weighed.

She definitely couldn’t slay while wearing that monstrosity.

She tilted her hand, titillated by how it glittered in the light. It was the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen, the stone the same color as vampire eyes.

Spike climbed up into the driver seat, and she shoved her hands beneath her butt again.

“You sure about this?” she asked, suddenly feeling all kinds of wrongness over leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

“What the Slayer wants the Slayer gets.”  Spike jabbed a button on the dash forcefully and the truck roared to life like freaking magic.  Or the USS Enterprise with its fancy touch-button dashboard.

The snow was coming down heavily now, and she couldn’t see any hint of a road, just an empty space of trees she assumed led off the property.

Cold air blasted out of the vents, making her shiver.  Spike put the truck in gear and the engine pitched higher.

“Stop.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Spike look at her.  She refused to turn her head. Instead, she focused on the cabin, blanketed in snow, icicles reflecting the colorful lights strung up on the eaves.

“You said I’m only here for tonight.  Then I go home?”

“That’s right,” he agreed.

“I don’t believe this is real.”

Spike sighed heavily.  “I know, Slayer, and you don’t have to believe it’s real.  You can just enjoy it.”

“But I have to get back.  I have to save Angel.”  She looked at him then, and she was shocked by how blue Spike’s eyes were now that they were out in the cold air.

He looked the same as she remembered, but the aura about him was so much older than she remembered.  The Spike sitting beside her had matured.  Settled.  He no longer seemed to have that chaotic energy that had always swirled around him.

He was content.

“Slayer.  Buffy.”  He placed a comforting hand on her arm, and she let him because damn if she didn’t need a little comforting right then. “You’re still going to be able to save Angel.”

“How do you know?”

“You told me.  You return right to the moment you left.  You didn’t even believe this was real for the longest time.”

She cocked her head.  “What made me believe?”

Spike glanced towards the cabin.  “Nibs.  We found him tucked away after his entire clan had been slaughtered by the New Initiative.  All of four years old and so determined not to cry for his mother and father.  You took one look at him and knew exactly who he was.  Knew that we were going to take care of him.  So, we brought him home.”

Buffy blinked back her tears.  Thinking about Nibs having parents made her have some seriously uncomfortable thoughts.

“Are there lots of demon kids.  Have I…” she couldn’t even finish the thought.  Couldn’t even begin to have the thought or she’d never be able to do her job again.

Spike’s hand tightened on her arm.  The weight of his presence was soothing.  “Slayer, you needn’t worry.  Any demon who finds itself in front of you is there because they’re up to no good.” Shooting her a grin, he said, "I should know."

Buffy had to breathe through her mouth just to get air, to somehow equalize the pressure in her chest.  She decided right then and there she needed to study up on demons so she didn’t make a terrible mistake.  Not just study but actually do more than patrol graveyards.  She needed to get more involved in the demon community.  Get to know those who lived peacefully with their human neighbors.

Why hadn’t Angel ever told her there were peaceful demons?  Surely he could help her navigate that world?  Help her become less ignorant?

 “Is his name really Nibs?” she asked inanely, searching for a way to lighten the pressure some more.

Spike’s smile was smooth and easy.  It made her uncomfortable when he smiled.  It was so damn incongruent to everything she knew about vampires—about Angel.  She didn’t think Angel even knew how to smile genuinely.  Every time he grinned it felt forced. 

Angelus' grin had been genuine. Open and delighted. Maniacally disturbing.

“No, his demon name is some unpronounceable gobbledygook.  Dawn named him after herself.”

“Who’s Dawn?”

Spike removed his hand from her arm to scratch the back of his head.  “Uh, someone you’ll meet in the future.”

“Why won’t you tell me about her?”

“I just don’t want to tell you too much about the future.  It’s your life.  I don’t have the right to muck about in it.”

“But obviously if this happened, then there was mucking!  Big time mucking!”

“Not by me, Slayer.  And I know better than to tell you too much about the future.  One, you won’t believe it, and two, you’ll get all twisted up about it.”

He was right, damn him.  She would get all twisted up about it.  “And JoJo?”

“She’s Faith’s and Robyn Woods’ kid.  They died in a car crash—of all fucking absurd things—when she was just a mite.”

That goddamn knot was back, moving so far up her throat she thought for sure she was going to choke on it.  Faith had a kid.  Reckless, careless Faith, who was right now watching her mother’s back while Buffy ran around saving a man who seemed disinclined to save himself.

“So, they aren’t our kids.”  That damned knot was making it hard for her to speak, and the dirty look Spike shot her made it swell.

“They’re ours in every way that counts.  Just because I didn’t knock you up doesn’t mean they aren’t ours.  My Buffy loves our kids, and she’d be brassed off as hell to hear you say such rot.”

He hit the gas and the truck jerked.

“Stop!”

He stomped on the brake and she slammed forward, nearly hitting her forehead for a second time in an hour.  She was going to end up with a concussion at this rate.

“What, Slayer?  What do you want me to do?” he snarled.

This was all so messed up, but she just needed to do what she always did, and roll with the punches.  She could force Spike to take her to town, buy her a bus ticket back to Sunnydale, fight and fight and fight like she always did.  Or she could just roll with it.  Rest.  Relax.  Actually celebrate Christmas instead of worrying about her messed-up destiny.

“We can’t leave them,” she whispered.  Spike expression softened, and she saw gratitude behind his eyes.

“Thank you, Slayer.”

She didn’t answer, just climbed out of the monstrously tall truck. She waited until Spike turned off the vehicle and trudged around to her side.

“Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could call me Buffy?  Just for the rest of the time I’m here?”

“Sure, Slay—Buffy.”

Buffy followed Spike back into the cabin.  The children instantly froze.  They were sitting at a cubby table she hadn’t previously noticed.  It was a bench built into the curve of the staircase, with another long bench on the other side, the perfect size for their small family.

Nibs had tucked JoJo into the built-in bench and was setting down two glasses of milk next to plates with what looked to be peanut butter sandwiches.  On the table between them was an open bag of chips, some of which were already scattered on the table.

“Its past lunch,” Nibs explained, casting a nervous glance at Buffy.

Spike nodded.  “Good boy, seeing to your sister, but you know you need to have some veggies.”

Spike moved to the fridge.  Buffy watched as he arranged carrot sticks, celery, broccoli and cauliflower on a plate with some ranch sauce.  He put the plate on the table between the kids who were staring at her instead of eating.

Buffy cleared her throat.  She was freaked out, didn’t know what the hell was going on, and really wanted to go home, but she was feeling bad about scaring the kids and ruining their Christmas Eve.

“Hey,” she started but a frog caught in her throat.  Spike glanced her way, frowning.  She tried again.  “I’m sorry I scared you earlier.”  She rubbed her sweaty palms on the velour pants.  “I think I got scared too.”

“Mama never gets scared.  She’s a superhero,” JoJo said, taking a huge bite of her sandwich, her big eyes never leaving Buffy.

“Everybody gets scared,” Nibs said solemnly.  He still hadn’t touched his sandwich.

Buffy straightened her shoulders.  “Your brother is right.  Everyone gets scared sometimes.”

“We scared you?”  JoJo sounded amazed, and Buffy couldn’t stop her little grin.

“You’re very fierce.”

JoJo grinned and Buffy could see she was missing a front tooth.

“Hungry, luv?” Spike indicated the sandwich makings still strewn on the counter.  Buffy nodded moving into the kitchen area.  She glanced at the cookies still on their sheet.  More had gone missing, and she cast a sly glance at the kids. 

Neatly stacked on parchment paper on the counter were a buttload more gingerbread and sugar cookies, along with a wicker basket filled with cookie decorations.

“So, are you our mama, but when she was a kid?”  JoJo asked.  Nibs had started eating, his red eyes still watching Buffy.

Buffy in no way felt like a kid.  She felt ancient, but she supposed at almost-eighteen she still was a kid in some ways.  Just not in any of the ways that counted.

She wasn’t one hundred percent she was in the future either.  She couldn’t fathom how events would have unfolded in such a way that she ended up married to Spike, with the added bonuses of having adopted both a demon child and a Slayer’s orphaned kid!

Never, not once, had she had any fantasy come even close to this crazy fever dream.

But she didn’t want to disappoint the kids either.  She glanced at Spike who was studiously not looking at her as he made her a sandwich.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Neat!”  JoJo said.

“Yeah, neat.”  Buffy poked through the cookie decorations in the basket.  There was colored sprinkles and sugar, gumdrops and cinnamon buttons.  “Hey, you guys want to decorate cookies after lunch?”

“Yes!” JoJo cheered, and Buffy felt her heart squeeze.  She hadn’t decorated cookies since moving to Sunnydale.  Her mom had stopped baking them.  Buffy hadn’t said anything, figuring she was too old for cookies anyways, but she had always been a little hurt.  After the institution and the divorce, her mom treated her like she wasn’t her little girl anymore. More like a stranger who was living in her house.

“Will you make Grandma Joyce’s secret cocoa?”  Nibs asked quietly.

“I miss Grandma,” JoJo mumbled through mouthful of peanut butter.

Buffy felt her heart seize.  “Where’s Grandma?”

“Arizona.  She and Pop Pop don’t like the cold,” Nibs told her.

“Pop Pop?” Buffy mouthed at Spike, but he just smirked.

“We’re going to go see them next month,” JoJo answered while pushing her plate away.

“Veggies,” Spike told her and she sighed gustily, rolling her eyes in a way Buffy found very familiar, but took some veggies and dipped them in ranch.

“Hurry up, Nibby.  I want to decorate cookies!”

Nibs had only eaten half his sandwich.  He rolled his eyes even more dramatically and started to eat marginally faster.

“Buffy still has to eat her sandwich,” Spike told them as he placed a sandwich and a glass of milk in front of her.  She noticed he also put carrots and cauliflower on her plate.  He knew she didn’t like celery and broccoli.

Buffy stood awkwardly at the counter to eat, watching as Spike fixed his own meal.  Again, she had to wonder if he had somehow turned human when he took a big bite of sandwich.

After they had all eaten and cleaned up, Buffy spread parchment paper across the table, remembering how her mom had done it each year for easy cleanup. 

Sometime between dotting her frosted sugar cookie tree with colored sprinkles and smearing her gingerbread girl with yellow frosting, she gave up the ghost and just sunk into the moment.  She didn’t understand what was happening, and she accepted she didn’t have to.  She just enjoyed it for what it was.

“I’m going to put the ham in,” Spike told them.  JoJo was giggling because Buffy had smeared frosting on her nose, and Nibs was concentrating very hard on professionally decorating his cookie.

When Buffy glanced at the kitchen, she saw that Spike had various bowls out and was in the middle of prepping food for dinner.

“Did you need help?”

JoJo stopped giggling.  Nibs looked up horror.

“What?” Buffy asked.

“Please don’t cook,” Nibs begged.

Buffy looked at JoJo whose eyes were big and a little wet looking, her hands covering her mouth and little shoulders shaking in mirth.

“I can cook!”

Spike snorted and covered the ham with tin foil.

“I can!”  She couldn’t.  She really couldn’t, but she helped her mom chop stuff before.

“Whatever,” Buffy scoffed and both kids giggled.  Even Nibs, who still threw measuring glances at Buffy from time to time.

Buffy and the kids cleaned up, and while Spike cooked dinner, the kids took her upstairs to show her their rooms.  There were Christmas decorations everywhere, even in the kids’ rooms and their play area.

Buffy wasn’t sure who had gone overboard with the decorations, her older self or Spike, but as she fingered the fresh greenery that must have been gathered from the woods, her money was on her.  Christmas had always been her favorite time of year.  Something about it was just pure magic. Since being Called that magic had diminished, replaced with the reality of the much harsher, grittier and entirely-unwelcome magic of evil warlocks and demon priests.

She'd especially let go of the fantasy as she stood on the hill overlooking Sunnydale while fighting with Angel to save himself.  In that moment, it seemed not even the magic of love could overcome the odds.

JoJo showed Buffy her My Little Pony collection, explaining the names of each pony and their special magic of friendship powers.  Nibs showed her his superheroes and villains.

At dinnertime, the kids scurried down the stairs, and Buffy slowly followed them.  At the top of the stairs, she paused to take in the view.  It was dark now, and the Christmas tree glowed with lights, the fire burning merrily.  More electric candles were placed around the room, nestled in greenery with red berries. All of it reflected again in the floor-to-ceiling windows, doubling the enchanting look of the cabin.

It was magical.  It was everything she had ever dreamed Christmas could be.  Spike placed the ham on the table where the kids had eagerly sat themselves.

All the fixings on the table, Spike moved to the foot of the stairs.  He had one hand on the newel post, one foot on the first step, and he just stopped, looking up at her like he was having a memory of another time when he stood staring up at her like she was a goddamn miracle.

That goddamn fucking knot in her throat grew until she could barely breathe around it. 

Spike wasn’t what she had imagined for herself, but watching how he smiled at his children, the way his eyes burned when looking up at her, she suddenly found herself knowing that it could never be any other way.  This was right.  This moment.  This time.

It was a Christmas miracle.

Slowly she made her way down the stairs, Spike watching her every step.  When she was close enough, he lifted his hand to her, and she placed her palm in his.  When she did, a smile broke across his face that stole her breath.  He looked so pleased.  So warm and loving, Buffy didn’t know what to do with herself.  No one had ever looked at her like she was a gift.

Angel had only ever looked at her like she was the source of his torment.

He led her to the head of the table and seated her.  The moment was lost as the kids chattered.  Spike turned to carve the ham and dish out food.  When he was done, he poured her a glass of chardonnay.

“I don’t drink,” Buffy protested.

“It’s a special occasion,” Spike told her.

~****~

JoJo handed her a painted ornament made of popsicle sticks.  It was in the shape of a Christmas tree—in its center was a school photo of the girl grinning widely, proudly showing off the gap in her teeth where she'd lost her first baby tooth.

Buffy was sitting on the couch after dinner, a second glass of chardonnay in her hand.  She was feeling mellow and happier than she had in a very long time.

She watched as the kids opened their one present each.  When it turned out to be matching footsie pajamas with a fluffy hood that made them look like little snowpeople, Buffy hid her spontaneous laugh behind her hand.

The children were so terribly disappointed.  Spike made a big deal of sighing and grumbling then produced two more presents for the kids.  A beautiful collectible Christmas Breyer horse for JoJo that made Buffy a little bit jealous, and an RC truck for Nibs that looked exactly like the one parked outside.

Nibs handed her a delicately hand-carved reindeer ornament.  Buffy turned it over in her hands reverently, amazed at the craftsmanship.  It would have been so difficult to carve the thin legs and antlers.  She could see where one of the antlers broke and had to be glued back on.

“Dad helped me.”

“I love it,” said Buffy.  She rubbed her forefinger of the brightly painted red nose.  “Rudolph is my favorite.”

“Rudolphina.”

“What?”

“Boy reindeer lose their antlers in the winter, so all the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh are girls,” Nibs informed her.

Buffy grinned in delight.  “I didn’t know that.  Thank you for telling me.”

Nibs nodded shyly and went back to racing his new truck around the living room.

~****~

Nibs was sitting in bed reading a comic.  Buffy hovered uncertainly around the doorway.  It had been so easy with JoJo, natural to sit next to the girl and read her a bed time story. But with Nibs, Buffy felt nervous.

“I know you don’t like me,” Nibs said without looking up from his comic.

Buffy startled, a shard of icy horror stabbing her heart—and conscience.  “That’s not true.”  It was a little bit true.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Nibs, it just was the whole demon thing was throwing her a little bit.

“Mom told me she worked for the Initiative when it first started out, and it took her a lot of years to get bad learning out of her head.”

That shard of horror grew until it was an iceberg that filled her entire chest.  Spike had said it was this Initiative thing that had killed Nibs’ whole family.  Had she done that?  Participated in some sort of demonic genocide?

All the blood drained from her head and she swayed.  She gripped the doorframe to stay upright.

“Why would your mom tell you that?”  That seemed like an awful thing to tell a child.

He set the comic on his lap, grimacing.  “I got mad at her.  Dad says that sometimes for kids, especially demon kids, it’s hard for us to express ourselves properly.”

Buffy rather thought it was hard for adults, human or otherwise, to express themselves properly, too.  She sure had a hard time of it.  More often than not, she expressed herself through violence.  Look how she popped Angel in the nose because he was frustrating her.

“You got mad at her so she said she didn’t like demons?”  Buffy couldn’t bring herself to believe that she had told the little boy in front of her that she slaughtered his entire family.  She couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d slay innocents.

“No, I told her that I thought she didn’t love me because she didn’t hug me the way she hugged JoJo.”

Jesus fuck, that almost sounded worse.  Did she play favorites?  Was she doing it now?  How easy it was for her to hug JoJo goodnight while she couldn’t even bring herself to come all the way into Nibs’ room, much less sit beside him.

“What did she say to that?”

“She said all she ever wanted to do was hug me.  Hug me all the time, but she didn’t feel like she had the right too.  She felt guilty for how she’d been when she was a kid herself, but she was grateful to be a part of my life.”  Nibs rubbed at his eyes.  “She said I was the best thing to ever happen to her.”

Oh, God.  She was going to suffocate on the hugeness of her own emotions.  Little demon kids weren’t the only ones with trouble with emotional regulation.  Buffy felt like she was going to cry, though not because his words made her feel too much, but because the broken look on the little boy’s face told her that he didn’t quite believe his mama’s words.  Didn’t believe her words.

Buffy had to look away from him.  She just couldn’t bear it.  Shoved in the boy’s bookcase she saw something pink.  Mr. Gordo.

She pulled him out, hugging him to her chest for comfort, and slowly walked over to Nibs.

“Can I sit?” she asked.  Nibs nodded.  Buffy sat carefully at the edge of the bed.

“Do you know who this is?”

“Mr. Gordo.”

Buffy hugged her pig tightly.  “I still sleep with him sometimes,” she confessed.  “He’s my best friend.  My parents used to fight a lot when I was a kid and he used to protect me.”

“You gave me him when I first came to live with you and dad.”

Buffy nodded.  “I would have wanted to make sure you felt as safe as possible.”

“How do you know?”

“'Cause I know me.  I’m the girl your mom was talking about.  The one that has the bad learning in her head when it comes to demons, but I know that I love you with everything in me and that nothing would be more important to me than making sure you felt safe and secure. Sometimes things get messed up in my head, and I think the best thing for people is to stay away from them.  That’s what your mama was thinking.  That it was best to stay away so I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Mama would never hurt me.”

“But she did, by not hugging you.  That was her being stupid thinking staying away would keep you safe.”

“Mama hugs me all the time now.”  Nibs squirmed in his bed, and Buffy grinned a little.

“’Cause she loves you, and as soon as she knew that hugs were what made you feel loved, she couldn’t stop.”

Nibs nodded looking a little embarrassed.

“I know I’m not your mama yet, but can I give you a hug?”

“I’d like that.”

Buffy hugged the boy tight, making sure not to damage him.

“Thank you for letting me get to know you.”

Nibs shrugged, not knowing what to say.  Buffy tucked Mr. Gordo in next to him.

At the doorway she turned back.  “It was really nice meeting you, Nibs.”

“You too, Buffy.”

~****~

“Did I kill Nibs' family?”

Spike fumbled the cocoa he was handing her, nearly dropping it in her lap.  “What?  Why would you ask that?”

Buffy took the mug from him, ignoring how her hand shook a little.  “You said earlier that the Initiative wiped out his entire clan, and he just told me that I used to work for the Initiative.  What is the Initiative?”

“It’s a military operation that captures and experiments on demons.  You did work for them for a time, but you shut them down in Sunnydale a long time before they ever attacked Nibs’ clan.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes.  “Tell me more about them." If there was some shady government operation snatching up demons on her home turf then she needed to put a stop to it.  Especially if they didn’t discriminate between demons causing an evil ruckus and those just trying to get home to their families.

“I don’t think I should.”

“What?  Why?”

“You knowing too much could change things, and it’s because of the Initiative that we ended up together.”

“How did that happen?”

“They made it so I couldn’t hurt humans, and that’s all I’m going to say on it.”

~****~

“How are you not evil?”

His grin was a little bit wicked, fueled by too much wine and the warm fire.  “What makes you think I’m not?”

The side-eye she gave him was loud.  She'd watched him gallop around the living room with JoJo on his shoulders, whinnying like a pony. Evil her ass.

He sighed, “I’m not going to lie, I struggle every day.  I had to learn not to hurt you.  Learn that not hurting you meant not hurting others.”

“It’s hard?”

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” 

She couldn’t imagine how not hurting people was hard.  Not hurting people should be natural.  Then she thought of the little boy upstairs and how her future self had hurt him without even trying. Hell, how her present-self had hurt him. There was more than one way to hurt a person, and sometimes it wasn’t always easy knowing how to not do it.

“Why do you do it?”

“I loved what you were.  How you tried.  The best and worst of you.  But it wasn’t enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“I loved what you were, but I couldn’t understand it.  I loved your mercy and compassion but didn’t understand why you were merciful and compassionate.  I loved my people, you, the Bit, your mum, but I felt nothing but contempt for everyone else in the world.  You were willing to sacrifice yourself repeatedly for a world I couldn't care less about—other than it needed to keep turning so my people would keep living.”

“You can’t force yourself to feel something that doesn’t exist.” she whispered.  This is why the soul was so important.  It gave you that spark of empathy that was otherwise missing.

Spike sat forward on the couch, his forearms resting on his knees as he stared into the fire.

“I had to change something.  Do something, or I’d lose you.”  Buffy looked at him like he was buckets of crazy.  How could he hope to change himself at such a fundamental level?  And he did it for her?

“What did you do?”

“I went to therapy.”

Buffy huffed out a laugh.  Surely not.

Spike turned to look at her, his expression dead serious.

“I found a psychiatrist specializing in teaching psychopaths how to function in the world.  I’ve undergone extensive cognitive behavioral therapy.  It helps that I’m on the lower end of the spectrum as I can experience emotions like grief and…,” he clenched his fists, turning away from her as if he couldn't bear her scrutiny.  “Love,” he finished. 

“And your love for me drove you do that?  Go to therapy?”  It might be wrong-headed of her, but after her stint in the institution, going to therapy, especially if it was as intensive as he indicated, sounded like the fifth circle of hell to her.

“Love drove me to be a better man.  A better person for you.  I can’t feel empathy at the same level as you, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t learn it.  I still struggle some days, but the more I practice it, the more I feel it.”

“Why?”  Buffy’s voice was small.  People didn’t do hard things for the sake of her.  Her parents hadn't believed her when she needed it the most because it was too hard.  Angel would rather die than fight his nature. 

Loving her just wasn’t worth how hard it was to do so.

“Because not understanding you on that very fundamental level hurt you.  No matter how I tried to do good, to take your lead, I never quite got it right.  I didn’t understand why it was so important to protect the stupid blood bags that went walking at night in the alley.

You died for this world, Buffy, and I would condemn the world easily to keep you safe.  It hurt you that I would tear apart everything you died for, just for little old insignificant you.”

She got his eyes back then. Burning and intense.  Unlike anything she had ever experienced before, and it made her squirm.

“Never mind there is nothing insignificant about you.  A miracle you are.”  His eyes held hers until she looked away.

“There was a sacred piece of yourself I could never understand, and most definitely never be able to touch.  It created an uncrossable divide between us that was tearing us apart.”

“So, you built a bridge.”

“I put in the work.  I put in the work so I don’t hurt the girl every goddamn day, and when I’m not sure, I check in with you or one of my sponsors.  And if someday…”

At his strained tone, her heart seized.  “Someday, what?”

“There’s a demon in Africa.  My Buffy and I have talked about it.  I pass some trials and he’ll grant me a wish.”

“A soul?” Buffy whispered.

Spike shrugged.  “Demons are notorious slyboots.  Could get a soul, could get a pulse, could never get a hard-on again.”

Buffy burst out laughing.

Spike watched her laugh, a soft look on his face.  He traced the curve of her cheek with one finger.  “The point is, if there is ever a question of me hurting the girl, then I’ll go.  I’ll fight with everything that I am to be the man you deserve.”

~****~

Buffy picked up the ornaments JoJo and Nibs made and walked over to the tree, which was trimmed with so many ornaments that it was hard to find a spot to hang them.  Once finished, she walked slowly around the tree, looking at all the decorations.

A flash of light caught her eye.  Hanging from one of the branches was the small mirror she had found on the Sunnydale street.  She cradled it so she could see her reflection.

“Christmas Miracle.”

The world tipped and Buffy was face first on the ground.  Someone grabbed her roughly from behind.  She flipped around to defend herself, seeing it was Angelus who had hold of her.

“No! No!”  She struggled in his grip.  She looked frantically around, recognizing the hillside and seeing the glow of Christmas lights on the rooftops below.  She was back in the moment she'd started in.  The moment where she was fighting harder for her and Angel’s love than he was.

She didn’t want to be here!  She wanted to go back to her family—to love and Christmas and gingerbread cookies.  She wanted to be in front of the fire in her beautifully decorated cabin while a snowstorm raged outside.

She wanted Spike.

Angel wrapped his fist in her jacket, hauling her up until his face was in hers.  “Am I a thing worth saving, huh?”  He shook her hard.  “Am I a righteous man?”  He kept shaking her, making her world go wobbly.  “The world wants me gone!”

“What about me?  I love you so much…and I tried to make you go away…I killed you and it didn’t help.”

She shoved him off her, and took a few steps away.  Everything she felt, the rollercoaster of emotions—from her frustration at Angel, her confusion about Spike, her affection for children who hadn’t even been born yet—burst out in a torrent of tears.

“And I hate it.  I hate that it’s so hard…and that you can hurt me so much.  I know everything that you did, because you did it to me.  Oh, God!  I wish that I wished you dead.  I don’t.  I can’t,” she whispers that last.

Spike built a bridge.  His actions hurt her so he put in the work and changed who he was on a fundamental level.  Angel couldn’t even be arsed to try.

“Buffy, please.  Just this once…let me be strong.”

What he was doing wasn’t strength.  It was cowardice.  What Spike did—fighting his nature to be at her side,  fighting against his instincts so he could understand her all the more—that was strength.

Going to therapy every goddamn day so he could understand himself better and putting in the work needed so they could be together was strength.

“Strong is fighting!” Buffy said, squaring her shoulders.  “It’s hard, and it’s painful, and it’s every day.  It’s what we have to do.  And we can do it together.”

She thought of the Christmas cabin she just came from.  About the family she just left.  Future-Buffy and Spike had fought long and hard together to get to that place, then they rested.  They rested together with their family.

“But if you’re too much of a coward for that, then burn.  If I can’t convince you that you belong in this world, then I don’t know what can.  But do not expect me to watch.  And don’t expect me to mourn for you.”

She turned away.  She wouldn’t stay here and fight for someone who wouldn’t even fight for themselves.  She was tired of carrying this load by herself.

She slipped her cold hands into her jacket pockets and felt something smooth.  She pulled it out.  It was the ornament she had picked up and forgotten about.  Snowflakes fluttered around her, falling onto the silver frame, and she swiped them away to read the engraved words.

“Buffy!  It’s a miracle.  A Christmas miracle!” Angel exclaimed.

Buffy looked at her reflection in the mirror.  It would be so easy to turn back to Angel, to sweep away all the anger and hurt, and revel in the miracle of Southern California snow saving Angel’s life.  The life he couldn’t be bothered to save himself.

Then she remembered Spike coming into the cabin, hair frosted with snow, the easy grin on his face.  Snow wasn’t a miracle.  It just made the sky overcast enough for vampires to walk around.

Buffy continued down the hill, ignoring Angel’s calls to wait.

She wouldn’t ever wait for him again.  She would never fight for him again.  She would never again let him suck her strength away for himself.

She fought for the world.  She fought for every single person in it.  All she ever asked for was for someone to love her the way she loved.  To fight the way she fought.  Never again would she give her love to someone who wouldn’t fight for her the way she fought for them.

~****~

Xander’s basement smelled.  He and Willow sat on the only couch, happily munching on popcorn while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.  She wished it was The Grinch.

She sat on the only chair which left the stairs for Spike since he refused to sit on the bed.  She watched him from the corner of her eye.  He was restless.  He'd just found out he could hurt demons, and he wanted to go hunting for ‘Christmas and puppies and shit.’

Buffy levered herself off the couch with a sigh.  “Spike, let's go patrolling.”  He gave her a surprised look before bouncing to his feet.  He looked absolutely ridiculous in Xander’s Hawaiian shirt.  She would need to get him new clothes.

“But the movie isn’t over with, Buffster.”

“I need to get home early-ish.  I promised Mom I’d have cocoa with her before turning in.”

Buffy thought about all the goodies she had to stuff into her mom’s stocking.  She couldn’t wait to see the look on her Mom’s face when she came downstairs to find a brand-new stocking filled with gifts, including that expensive chocolate she loved so much and didn’t allow herself to have.

“Gotta get up early for all the Christmas morning cheer,” Xander said amicably, although everyone knew there would be no Christmas cheer in his house in the morning.

Buffy walked to the door, Spike at her heels.  “Good night, and Merry Christmas,” she told her friends.

She and Spike walked silently though the streets.  The lamps were bedecked with garland and ribbons, lit reindeer and trees perched at the tops.

“Where we going?” Spike asked suspiciously once he realized Buffy wasn’t walking towards the cemeteries.

“Home.”

Spike halted.  “What am I supposed to do then?”

Buffy sat on a bus bench, motioning for him to join her.  Spike hesitated before sitting beside her.  “Got no place to sleep now you’ve dragged me out of the whelp’s nasty basement.”

“You can sleep in my basement and spend Christmas with my mom and me.”

The expression on Spike’s face was pure incredulousness.  There was also something else there.  Something familiar.

“You’d allow that, Slayer?”

Buffy rounded on him.  “Swear to me you’ll never hurt my mother.”

Spike raised his hands defensively.  “Like your mum, she’s a real lady.  Never harm a hair on her head.”

Buffy’s eyes drifted up to his hair.  “Can I check your head?”

Spike had said the commando boys had done something to his skull, but he never let anyone take a look.  She wondered if they called themselves the Initiative.

He stared hard at her for a moment, before nodding.  She gently carded her fingers through his hair, ignoring how his eyelids drooped.  At the back of his skull, she could feel a slight malformity.  Like a piece of his skull wasn’t sitting quite right.

She dropped her hands, but continued to stare into Spike’s eyes.  He stared right back, but she could feel him start to get nervous.

That chaotic, anxious energy of his hadn’t settled into maturity yet.

That was okay because she hadn’t settled into her maturity yet either.

“I think we should have another truce,” she announced.

He slumped petulantly in his seat with his arms crossed.  He looked so much like a little boy she almost smiled.

“Don’t see why we’d do such a thing.  It’s not like we’ve got a common enemy.”

“Sure we do.  Those commando guys who did this to you.”

“Don’t know, Slayer.  They seem like your kind of fellas.  Ready to do harm to innocent demons who are just mucking about, minding their own business.”

“Absolutely not!” she spat and Spike startled at her vehemence.  “I only slay those who are up to evil.  These commando guys are indiscriminate.”

Spike’s brow rose.  “Using your big girl college words, are we?”

“Shut up, Spike.  Let’s just agree that I won’t hurt you while we figure out what’s wrong with you, and you promise not to hurt my friends or my mother once we get you fixed.”

She stuck out her hand.  Spike looked a little dazed as he slowly took her hand and shook it.

Without another word, she got up from the bench and started walking home, Spike dogging her heels.

“I’m home!” Buffy called as she walked into the foyer, tugging off her jacket to hang it up.  Spike stood outside the door.

Buffy tilted her head in welcome.  “You still have an invite.”

He quickly disguised his awe with a smirk but Buffy saw it.

“You’re home earlier…” Joyce trailed off when she saw Spike in the foyer.

“Is it okay if Spike stays with us for a while?  Some people hurt him pretty bad and he needs a safe place to stay.”

Joyce’s concern softened, but there was still hesitation in her eyes.  “If you think it’s alright, Buffy?”  Which was Joyce’s way of asking if Spike was safe.

He placed his hand over his heart and gave her his best charming smile.  “Safe as houses, I am.  Can’t hurt humans anymore.  And like I told the Slayer; I don’t lay hands on ladies such as yourself.”

Joyce’s flicked her eyes to Buffy, and her daughter nodded in reassurance. 

“In that case, would you like some cocoa, Spike?”

“Ta, that would be lovely, mum.”

Spike followed Joyce into the kitchen.  Buffy veered off into the living room, walking up to the Christmas tree.  It took her a moment to find the mirror ornament, but it was hung next to the popsicle stick Christmas tree she made when she was in the third grade. 

She cradled it in her hands, watching her reflection in the mirror.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” she said as she let go of the ornament.  It dangled from the branch, glittering magically in the light.