Title: A Mother’s Plea
Author: Slaymesoftly
Rating: PG13
Season III- just after Buffy has made Angel bite her to save him from the poison in his system.
Disclaimer: All Joss, all the time. I’m just playing with his toys.
Distribution: BSV, Spuffy Stuff, SA, Vamp Kiss – anyone else, give me a shout
A gazillion thank yous to Always_jbj for both the beta and the time spent getting rid of random lines that appeared and wouldn’t go away. * hugs C.*
A Mother’s Plea
The souled vampire came back to himself suddenly, the poison having been eliminated from his system by the incredible elixir he’d just ingested. He looked down at the crumpled form of the love of his life and gave an anguished howl as he saw what he’d done. Vampire hearing allowed him to pick up the faintest trace of a heartbeat and he quickly pressed the cloth they’d been using on his feverish head against the bloody wound in her neck before picking up her limp body and racing toward the nearest hospital.
He strode into the emergency room to find her Watcher, her mother and, somewhat inexplicably, his grandchilde all standing by themselves in an empty intake area.
Joyce gave a muffled cry and ran to his side, her stomach clenching when she recognized his burden.
“What happened? We know Faith was stabbed – she’s here, was Buffy stabbed too?
“No,” Giles said in a low, dangerous voice that was new to her. He glared at the completely recovered vampire. “She wasn’t stabbed, was she, Angel?”
The vampire shook his head mutely, already hearing the heartbeat slowing even more.
“I’m sorry, Joyce,” he whispered, depositing Buffy’s body on the nearest bed and leaving the room with his head bowed.
Joyce looked around frantically for help, but all the emergency room personnel were at the other end of the large triage area dealing with a sudden influx of casualties. The mayor’s gang of vampires, knowing the Slayer was distracted by Angel’s condition, had been terrorizing the town since sundown and in addition to the random victims being carried in, a bus that had been hijacked by the vamps was providing a rush of injured and dying patients, all needing blood immediately.
“What happened?” Joyce looked frantically from Buffy’s watcher to the blond vampire who’d shown up at her door unexpectedly just as she was leaving for the hospital. He hadn’t appeared to be drunk this time, so Joyce gratefully accepted his offer to drive her and hadn’t even thought about his being a vampire until she saw the expression on Giles’ face when she walked in followed by William the Bloody.
She’d explained to Spike on the way over about Angel’s being shot with the poisoned arrow and Buffy’s attempt to bring Faith in to cure him. Buffy hadn’t shared with her mother that it was Faith’s blood Angel needed to live, so Joyce made no connection between the obviously recovered vampire’s health and her daughter’s own dire condition.
When Giles didn’t answer immediately, but ran to get someone to give Buffy a transfusion, Spike answered for him, “The bloody wanker almost killed her. That’s what happened.”
He stepped closer to the bed, hearing Buffy’s heart rate slowing even more as they looked at her. Under the blond hair, her face was ashen, her lips blue and she appeared to be dead. A moan from the woman beside him brought his attention back to the Slayer’s mother. He felt an unaccustomed pang of sympathy for the woman who welcomed him into her home whenever he needed a shoulder to cry on.
“She…she looks dead…” Joyce’s voice choked on a sob as she pushed some hair off Buffy’s face.
“She almost is, luv,” Spike said, gently putting an arm around her quaking shoulders. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to get enough blood into her quickly enough. I’m sorry, Joyce. Truly I am.”
He surprised himself by the truth of his words. Not only was he sorry for the obvious grief Buffy’s mother was about to suffer, but he was sorry to see the Slayer meet such a sad end.
(Drained by her git of a boyfriend to save his own worthless unlife. She deserved better, my beautiful, brave Slayer.)
“Can’t you do something?” Joyce’s frantic plea brought his attention back to the dying girl on the table and he shook his head sadly.
“Believe me, Joyce, if there was anything I could do, I would do it. I don’t want to see her gone either.”
He was shocked to find that the words he had thrown out so easily in an effort to make Buffy’s mother feel better, were actually a true reflection of his feelings.
“You could if you wanted to.” The desperation in the mother’s voice cut him, even as he shook his head again. Refusing to give up, she faced him angrily. “You were dead once – and now you’re not!”
He stared at her in astonishment for a full second before stuttering, “You can’t be asking me…I AM dead, Joyce. It’s a demon that keeps this body going. You don’t want that for the—for Buffy. She wouldn’t want that.”
“I don’t care what she wants,” Joyce insisted stubbornly. “You COULD do it, couldn’t you?”
He tried to look away from her challenging stare, shaking his head back and forth.
“She’s a slayer, Joyce. She wouldn’t want to become one of the creatures she hunts. If I turn her, the first thing she’ll do when she wakes up is stake me. Right before she walks out into the sun, probably.”
“Why would she do that?” Joyce’s voice was shrill as she tried futilely to pull him closer to her daughter’s lifeless body.
“Because,” he tried to explain quickly, ”turned Slayers keep their souls. They don’t want to be vamps, they won’t feed and they still want to slay. She’ll be furious that I’ve made her a vamp. She’ll kill me and she’ll be brassed off at you for asking me to do it. She’ll hate it, Joyce. I’m sure of it.”
“So, you won’t do it because you’re afraid of her. Is that it?” Joyce said dully, releasing his arm. She sat down beside her inert child and rested her head on the bed in a resigned fashion. “I’m going to lose my only child because you’re afraid she’ll stake you.”
“Oh, bloody hell!” Spike indulged a few seconds of creative swearing, before shoving Joyce roughly out of his way and bending over the dying slayer.
“Alright, luv. Doin’ this for your mum, so don’t be taking it out on me when you wake up. You hear me, Slayer?” he whispered as he removed the bloody rag from her neck. He cringed at the gaping wound his grandsire had made in the girl’s neck. “Bloody animal,” he muttered as he ran his tongue over the wound, licking up what little blood was left to ooze out and closing the edges of it at the same time. When he’d done what he could to make the bite less likely to leave a bad scar, and had swallowed as much of her blood as he could without actually trying to pull more from her body, he looked at her mother once again and asked quietly, “Are you sure?”
She nodded, her mouth set in a straight line and her hands clasped together so hard her knuckles were white. She met Spike’s gaze firmly until he sighed and turned back to the girl on the bed. He leaned across her body to place his lips on the other side of her neck, sliding his fangs in easily and taking one long pull of her blood before opening his mouth and licking the tiny wounds closed. The long draught of blood he’d taken had been the last straw for her heart and he could feel it stopping.
Quickly, he bit though his own wrist and held it to Buffy’s mouth, whispering into her ear as though her mother wasn’t sitting there listening to every word.
“Come on, pet. Show us what you’ve got. Bite me back, luv. Come on, Slayer, take it.” His voice trembled as he worried that he’d waited too long and the slayer was too far gone to do what needed to be done. He pressed his bleeding wrist to her lips, forcing the blood into her mouth and waiting for her to swallow. He gave a sigh of relief when, from some hidden reserve of Slayer strength, she summoned the will to swallow the coppery tasting liquid flowing into her mouth.
“That’s my good girl. Drink it down, pet. Take as much as you want. I can get more. You take whatever you need from me, Slayer. Make yourself strong.”
Joyce watched – torn between horror at what she was witnessing, and hope that it was going to save her daughter’s life. When Buffy stopped swallowing and her head fell back against the pillow, Joyce jumped and asked, “What’s wrong? What happened.”
“She died, Joyce,” Spike said gently, licking his own wound closed before putting his arms around Buffy’s mother. When she flinched away from him, crying, “You were supposed to save her!” he sighed and dropped them to his sides.
“She has to die before she can rise again, Joyce. Try not to let them take her anywhere tonight. If they put her in the morgue, I can probably break in and get her later. I’ll bring her home and she can wake up in her own bed instead of clawing her way out of a grave. And don’t tell the Watcher,” he warned with a low growl. “He’ll want to stake her.”
When Joyce didn’t reply, but just kept staring at Buffy’s lifeless body in horror, he whispered, “It worked. I promise you,” before he disappeared out the door into the darkened parking lot.
When Giles came back a few seconds later, dragging an over-worked doctor behind him, he found Joyce sobbing quietly as she held her daughter’s lifeless hand. With a moan of distress, he fell to his knees beside the bed, adding his own quiet sobs to Joyce’s.
The doctor quickly verified that they were mourning a dead girl; he was sympathetic, but all business. Drained, bloodless bodies were an every night occurrence at Sunnydale Memorial Hospital and he was just anxious to clear out the small room for the next victim. He nodded when Joyce asked in a trembling voice if she could let them know in the morning about funeral home arrangements and he readily agreed to keeping Buffy’s body in the morgue overnight.
The Watcher’s sorrow was so obvious and so genuine, that Joyce had to fight the urge to tell him what she’d done, but she remembered what Spike had said about his staking Buffy if he thought she was turned and bit her lip instead. She couldn’t contain her own tears, even with Spike’s promise of success, the fact that her daughter was, for all intents and purposes, dead was too overwhelming and she did not have to fake her own grief.
Giles took her home, fixed them both stiff drinks, and eventually, when she assured him she would be fine, he left to go back to his apartment and drown his own grief in cheap scotch. Before leaving Joyce to her empty house, he promised her that he would tell Willow and Xander. By the time Joyce heard the quiet knock on the kitchen door, she was well on her way to being very drunk and she stumbled slightly as she made her way to the kitchen to let Spike and his precious burden in the door.
Buffy’s body was wrapped in a sheet and appeared very small in the vampire’s arms. He stepped into the kitchen and gave Joyce a reassuring nod as he walked towards the hallway and the stairs.
“You’ll have to tell me where to go, Joyce. I’ve never been upstairs.”
Shaking herself out of her stupor, she hastened to get in front of him, pointing at the stairs and saying, “This way. Her room is up here.”
He followed the nervous woman into a small, girlish bedroom – the décor showing the tastes of a girl on the verge of womanhood. Posters of boy bands coexisted with copies of Cosmo magazine; pajamas with fish all over them side by side with lacy underwear littered the floor.
He gently deposited his burden on the bed, holding her up until Joyce had turned down the covers and then allowing Buffy to sink onto her own sheets and pillows. He pulled the sheet that had been covering her face off to expose the white, still features of the Slayer. Joyce gave a little gasp; then regained control asked in a trembling voice, “How…how long?”
“Probably tomorrow night,” he answered, stepping away from the bed. “I’ll try to be back before sundown in case she rises early.”
“What if you’re not here? What do I do? Will she know me?”
Second thoughts were clearly visible on Joyce’s face and the vampire’s eyes flashed amber for a second.
“If you’re going to change your mind on me, say so now,” he growled. “If you don’t want her here, tell me and I’ll take her somewhere safe.”
Now that he’d done what Buffy’s mother had asked, he realized that he had done something he’d sworn never to do – he’d created a childe. He hadn’t actually been the one to take Buffy’s life, but he’d given her as much of his own blood as he could get her to take and he now felt more than responsible for the soon-to-be-fledgling vampire lying in front of them.
He actually had no idea what Buffy was going to be like when she rose. Even with her soul, he had to assume that the blood lust would be overwhelming and he vowed silently to be there in plenty of time to protect Joyce from her daughter just in case.
“No, no,” Joyce hastened to assure him. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m just not sure what to expect, that’s all.”
“Neither am I, to tell you the truth,” he admitted sheepishly. “It’s very rare that a slayer gets turned and I’ve never been around one that was. I just hope she doesn’t hate us both.”
“Doesn’t she already hate you?” Joyce asked innocently.
With a rueful laugh, the vampire agreed. “That she does. ‘S going to make her even more brassed off when she finds out who did it. I’m planning to point at you and run, soon’s I see that she’s alright.”
“William the bloody coward,” Joyce muttered, but she gave the vampire a small smile.
“Your daughter’s a right scary bint under the best of circumstances,” he smiled back at her. “It’s not cowardice, it’s self-preservation.”
Unconsciously smoothing Buffy’s hair off her face, he stared at her for a minute before straightening up and walking towards the door.
“I’ll be back sometime tomorrow afternoon, Joyce. Leave the back door unlocked, will you? I ‘spect I’ll be in a bit of a hurry to get indoors at that time of day.”
She agreed absently, still staring at her daughter’s dead body and praying that she’d done the right thing.
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!