The Cost of Butterfly Kisses

[lit_gal]

The Cost of Butterfly Kisses, Part 29
Fandom/Pairing: BtVS, Spike/Xander
Rated: ADULT
Prompt: Heavy Hearted

SPURTING AHEAD    SPURTING AHEAD  ((FOURTH CHAPTER IN TWO DAYS, FOLKS!!))

Summary: The First is ready to go from mind games to all-out attack, but this time, hopefully the gang is a little more ready.





(Chapter One... )  ( Chapter Two... )  ( Chapter Three... ) ( Chapter Four... ) ( Chapter Five )   ( Chapter Six )   ( Chapter 7 )  ( Chapter 8 )  ( Chapter Nine )  ( Chapter Ten )   ( Chapter Eleven )  ( Chapter Twelve ) ( Chapter Thirteen ) ( Chapter 14 . ) ( Chapter 15 )  ( Chapter 16 ) ( Chapter 17 ) ( Chapter 18 ) ( Chapter 19 ) ( Chapter 20 ) ( Chapter 21 )  ( Chapter 22 )  ( Chapter 23 )  ( Chapter 24 ) ( Chapter 25 )   ( Chapter 26 ) ( Chapter 27 ) ( Chapter 28 )

Chapter 29

The knock on the door sent Xander reaching for his gun.

"Won't help against most beasties," Spike pointed out from his place in the chair.

"Yeah, but even you're going to be surprised if you're met with a gunshot to the face," Xander pointed out with a sadistic grin. Spike gave him a very odd look in return, and Xander realized that he was talking to someone chained to the chair. "Not that I would ever shoot you in the face," he hurried to add. Spike's eyebrow quirked. "Because the days of me wanting you dead are long over. Well, not long if measured by vampire time what with living with centuries, but...." Xander snapped his mouth shut and just turned to the door. Spike was really looking at him oddly now, but Xander couldn't quite figure out how to get his feet out of his mouth. It made his heart heavy when he realized just how much they'd all hurt each other, and still did, and oddly, Spike was now in that category of people he didn't want to see hurt.

Bracing his foot behind the door, he got a good grip on his gun and hid it behind his hip as he eased the door open. In the crack, he could see Buffy leaning heavily on Giles. "Giles?" Xander's mouth fell open.

"Yes, it is I. Perhaps you could open the door," Giles suggested. Three girls stood behind Giles and Buffy.

"Buffy?" Xander asked. If they were all seeing things, he wasn't willing to trust that Giles had just randomly shown up. One of the girls sort of pushed past Giles and reached out to shove the door open. "Oh for God's sake, just let us in." She pushed on the door, but Xander's foot blocked it. Xander brought the gun up, pointing it right at her face.

"Okay, I know I don't know you, and I suspect that I'm seeing things, so I'm pretty much going to pull the trigger first and figure out what's hallucination and what's real later." Xander might not normally be willing to do things in that order, but his daughter was in the house, and if this thing from below wanted in, it was getting in over his dead body.

"Xander?" Tara called.

The girl had fallen back, her eyes wide.

"Good Lord, Xander. We have an apocalypse to worry about. Must we worry about your idiocy as well?"

Okay, that sounded a whole lot like Giles, but he still wasn't feeling too sure. "Tara, will the house spell protect us if these are bad guys dressed up like friends?" Xander asked.

Buffy raised her head and she was badly beaten. "Xander, it's Giles. The council is gone, and these are the potentials. Open the door."

Xander wanted to. He wanted to let Buffy in, but a little part of him worried that this might be like K'wani, a hallucination sent to trick him. If that was the case, Xander wasn't sure he was strong enough to fight this many people.

"Do kindly move," Giles snapped.

"Tara?" Xander asked.

"I've got it covered," Tara said.

Xander stepped back and glanced over at Spike. He hated have strangers in his house with Spike tied up, but he couldn't exactly let Spike loose to eat people if he heard the murder theme song. Xander let his gun fall to his side as Giles helped Buffy to the couch, the three girls following.

"What happened?" Xander asked. Tara stood in the kitchen archway, her hands hidden under her apron.

"The First." Giles looked at Spike. "Have you been acting up again?"

"Giles, back off," Xander said. Once Buffy was settled on the couch, Giles stood up, his back iron stiff as he glared at Xander.

"He's one of us," Buffy agreed. "Please tell me you have aspirin." She changed the subject, and immediately Giles' attention when back to her. Once a Watcher, always a Watcher.

"You took some nasty blows."

"And if it did that to a real slayer, it's going to rip through us," one of the girls whispered.

"The First hit you?" Xander slipped his gun back into his waistband. "Okay, so we've moved on from the light show to the hitting, so we just have to change tactics."

"It summoned a Turok-Han," Giles snapped. "This is unexpected, but the First is the source of evil, an eternal entity with endless resources."

"A Turok-Han?" Spike's eyebrows went up. "Didn't think those buggers were real."

"Neither did I, until today." Whatever a Turok-Han was, it had clearly freaked out Giles, and even Spike was looking a little green around the gills. Xander closed the door and dropped the heavy bolt into place. Spelled glass or not, maybe it was time to close the steel shutters. The nice thing about having a demon designed house as that demons were more than a little paranoid about home security.

"What's up with the bondage fun?" The dark-haired girl that Xander had pulled the gun on asked in a suspicious voice.

"The First has been sending us visions, and it played a few mind tricks on Spike."

"Killed a whole lot of people," Spike agreed as he looked the woman up. "You smell like a slayer, but you don't feel like one."

"I smell like...?" All three girls stumbled over themselves to get away from Spike, but he just sat in his chair watching them with the same amusement. Xander was guessing that he didn't feel amused because a vampire chained up in a room with this many slayers had to be twitchy.

"So, potential slayers?" Xander guessed.

"Is he a vampire?" one of the girls asked.

"Yep, and if you stake him, I will personally let something vamp you so I can stake you back," Xander warned. He wasn't exactly being a good host, but the invasion of the teenage attitudes was not making him happy.

"You will do no such thing," Giles snapped before turning to the three girls, a slightly less cranky expression on his face. "However, Spike is off limits. He has his uses, and he is not generally dangerous. Right now, we need to focus on the real danger. The First has declared war on the entire line. It's not corporeal, so it must act through intermediaries." Giles glanced over toward Spike. "Weak individuals it manipulates or its priests—the Bringers."

Spike stiffened at getting called weak, but he didn't comment.

"So, we're all at risk then," Xander said firmly. "I mean, it tried to play mind games with me and with Dawn. Buffy, has it been working on you?"

Buffy nodded. "I keep seeing my mom telling me that I just have to rest, that I have to take care of myself, only her version of getting me to take care of myself seems to include not fighting. It's really hard to ignore because everything she says is something Mom would have said."

"Only Joyce would have been fighting harder than anyone when the big fight came," Xander finished for her. Joyce might not have gotten in the middle of the slaying often, but when she did, she was perfectly willing to bash something big and bad over the head.

"Bloody right she'd be fighting," Spike agreed. "Classy lady, your mum, with a spine of steel."

"She was," Buffy agreed sadly, her eyes shining.

"I keep seeing my grandmother," Tara admitted. "She tells me to throw my magic at rising evil, but with Willow...." Tara looked down. "I'll go get aspirin."

"Willow?" Giles asked. Xander stared at Buffy, not even sure how to get into that explanation. Giles had been gone long enough that Xander didn't know where to start.

"She went off the deep end, sold out her magic to a bloke named Rack, summoned a demon, nearly got the Bit killed, and wiped everyone's mind for jollies... and to hide that she'd been mentally raping Tara for months, erasing Tara's good judgment along with the memory of their fights. Of course, you were there for that bit, Rupert. You just didn't think it was important enough to deal with. She was a right treat to watch, if you're an evil fiend," Spike summed it up.

"Spike," Buffy warned with a dark tone.

"He might have been a little blunt, but it's the basic truth," Xander said. "However, he left off where Willow gave up magic for a couple of months, until she didn't feel a need to use it. And now she only uses magic with Tara around to help guide her, and she let Tara put spells on her to monitor his power. So it's not all bad." Xander gave Spike a dirty look, but Spike didn't look even a little embarrassed about ripping into Willow.

"Oh hell." Giles cursed softly and sat on the couch next to Buffy. "I had thought that she would change after that dreadful spell. I never expected her to...." His voice trailed off.

"Yeah, because once you have a taste of power, once you've summoned a demon by letting your powers go wild, it's a right picnic to just stop abusing that sort of magic." Spike gave a nasty snort and Giles looked up so the two men could glare at each other for several seconds.

Xander stepped into the line of glare and stood beside Spike's chair. "Okay, before we reminisce about our good old days of mutual hatred, can I just ask why you're here?"

Buffy leaned back on the couch and gratefully took aspirin and a glass of water from Tara while Giles answered. "The council was clearly in imminent danger. I grabbed what I could and came here with my three charges. Other potential slayers will follow as the few remaining Watchers try to direct them here, but if this is an all-out war, we need our resources in one place."

"Oh yeah, because then the First can blow us all up at once," Xander pointed out. Giles' glare slipped from Spike to Xander. "Just pointing out the tactical error in your thinking, and speaking of tactical errors, why are you at my house because I really don't want this place to turn into ground zero of a tactical nuclear strike."

"The Turok-Han followed me to the house," Buffy said, her voice as defeated as Xander had ever heard. "Thank God Dawn wasn't there. Where is Dawn?" Buffy asked, looking around.

"Her and Halvard are doing some science project next door, and his parents promise to send her running over here if anything slimy or scaly shows up," Xander said, ignoring the confused look on Giles' face. "And we're back to why we're all making ourselves one nice compact target."

"I still say that we should be on the other side of the world, not sitting on top of a hellmouth, so I'm kind of agreeing with Farmer John here."

"Kennedy!" one of the other girls said in a horrified voice.

"Construction worker Xander," Xander corrected her, "and feel free to head for the other side of the world as fast as your legs can carry you."

"She most certainly will not." Giles looked angry enough to give birth to kittens. "Their Watchers are dead, torn apart by Bringers who have clearly found a way to track the line. If the last of the Slayers die, there will be no way to protect the line and humanities first line of defense against the darkness will fall."

"She looks pretty fallen to me already," Kennedy muttered.

"Oi, don't be so sure. Buffy's one tough bird." Spike gave Buffy a supportive smile, and Buffy smiled back with half her mouth so swollen that it didn't move.

"We've been kicking demon ass since 1997," Xander agreed. "We'll kick the First's non-corporeal ass right back to wherever he came from."

"Daddy?" a soft voice called, and Xander looked over to see Bonnie peering from behind a door, ready to run for cover. Clem was not only teaching her human history and culture, but doing a good job of teaching her how to protect a line of retreat. Xander just hated that his daughter has so many opportunities to use that particular skill.

"Honey, it's okay, come here," Xander encouraged her. Bonnie came slowly into the room, giving the three potential slayers a wide berth before standing next to Xander, her eyes studying the room. "Bonnie, this is Giles—Buffy's old Watcher. And these are three girls with no manners and a whole lot of attitude." Xander was well aware that he was poisoning Bonnie against the potentials, but so far, he was okay with that.

Spike snorted. "Subtle, luv."

Xander shrugged. "Giles, this is my daughter, Bonnie."

"Daughter?" Giles had an expression on his face that Spike would call gobsmacked. Up until this moment, Xander had thought that was a pretty stupid word, but gobsmacked worked a whole lot better than plain old shocked. "Daughter?" Giles asked again, pitching his voice up.

"Remember the night of the hyena? Well, I did a little more than chase cars and pee on trees," Xander joked. Bonnie's mother and I... well... obviously we...." Xander stopped, blushing as he tried to find a way to explain that.

"The boy diddled a half-kwaini," Spike said.

"He.... Oh my." Giles' glasses came off.

"In the face of an apocalypse, I would think my love life would be a little less than important," Xander complained. The last thing he needed was for Giles to make a big deal out of this.

"Where's the mother? Oh lord, this is an ancestral kwaini home, isn't it? The protective runes are demonic in nature, but it never occurred to me that you were involved with a kwaini family, certainly not to the point that they would allow you inside their lair."

"I'm not... exactly," Xander said. "K'wani's mother was not thrilled about the fact she chose me, and I pretty much just tried to stay out of the way until K'wani and the family left town."

"K'wani?" Giles repeated.

"That was her name," Xander explained.

Giles blinked at him. "That's not a name, Xander."

"It was Mommy's name," Bonnie said firmly.

"Yes, it was," Xander agreed, glaring at Giles.

The glasses went back on. "Xander, I'm not sure how to broach what is surely a difficult subject." He glanced down at Bonnie. "Perhaps we can talk later."

That made Xander's gut clench. Getting called into the office shouldn't freak him out when he was an adult, but he pretty much felt like a teacher had just given him detention. "Mommy's name means girl-child. It's what they call all children until they grow big enough to have a real name, but Granddame didn't think Mommy deserved a name because she didn't have the magical powers Granddame wanted," Bonnie said with a solemnity that didn't match her childlike voice. But then what she was saying wasn't very childlike.

Xander crouched down and looked Bonnie in the eye. "She refused to give her daughter a real name?" Xander asked.

Bonnie nodded. For one shining moment, Xander thought he was going to be sick. "Mommy said that Granddame had to give me a name or Mommy would take me away and never come back and tell everyone she met that Granddame wasn't worth following," Bonnie confessed. "That's why Granddame named me Bo'yan'nea."

When Xander looked at Spike, he just gave an awkward shrug; however, when Xander looked at Giles, the man had gone pale and sat down on the couch. "She who disgraces her mother," Giles whispered. Xander's vision went black for a second, and if that old bat had been in front of him, he would have strangled her with his bare hands. Reaching out, he caught Bonnie in his arms and held her tight, all his emotions spilling out so that silent tears slipped free.

"It's okay because you renamed me Bonnie. Mommy looked it up. You renamed me pretty and good, and that's all that matters."

Xander's chest ached, his heart weighed down with guilt. He'd left his daughter with those people. He'd never given her a new name—he just couldn't pronounce her name. If it weren't for the fact that he was an idiot, he would have gone through life calling his daughter a name that made his stomach churn. Holding on tightly, Xander struggled to get air into his lungs.

"Past doesn't matter, Harris. She's loved now. It really doesn't matter," Spike was saying softly, and fingers caught at Xander's hair since Spike couldn't reach more than that because of how he was chained. Tara came over and knelt next to them.

"You didn't know. You're the best father you can be," Tara whispered in his ear.

"You're the best Daddy," Bonnie said, and Xander could hear the confusion in her voice. Wiping a hand across his eyes, Xander leaned back against Spike's chair, still holding his daughter in his lap.

"If your granddame ever shows her face in town, I'm going to chase her down and...." Xander stopped when he looked down at his daughter's curious face. She didn't need to hear all the homicidal fantasies in Xander's heart.

"You'll never have a chance, pet. I'm claiming that right." Spike's voice was hard, and when Xander looked up, he could see that Spike didn't have any doubts about killing that old bag, soul or not.

"I'll race you," Xander said grimly.

"I'll win."

"Excuse me. Not to interrupt," one of the potentials said—not the one who had already pissed Xander off, but one with slightly lighter hair and an English accent. "but are we safe here? I'm a bit concerned about the Turok-Han breaking in here."

"I'm more concerned about the fact that nothing she did stopped it," Kennedy said as she looked at Buffy. Xander noticed that Buffy had slid off the couch and was sitting next to Tara, her hand on Xander's leg. Hugging Bonnie, Xander realized that he had family, and it was time to protect what was his.

"Then we help her stop it," Xander said firmly. "What did you guys hit it with?" Xander asked as he looked at the potentials. He knew what Buffy used in a fight—blunt objects, fists, kicks, and something pointy for the grand finale. She was a very different fighter from Faith who liked to use cutting edges and slice into her enemy. However, he didn't know what these girls brought to the table.

"Us?" One of them asked with big eyes.

"Xander, they aren't slayers," Giles explained. "They simply carry the potential, which is why they've become targets.

"Hey, newsflash," Xander said, "I'm not a slayer, either. But I still go wading into the fight. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm the one that got you out of Angelus' lair."

"He is?" one of the not-Kennedy girls whispered to her two friends.

"Xander, I'm the slayer," Buffy said firmly as she pushed herself up and sat back down on the couch.

"Yep, which means you get to lead the fight and do all the really crappy jobs," Xander agreed. "I know that if I'd been trying to distract the giant mayor snake, he would have eaten me because I don't have slayer speed. But I was there planting dynamite, so you just tell me where to put the dynamite this time."

"You're really going to go into the fight?" Kennedy demanded with the sort of arrogance that Xander had always hated in Faith.

Giving Bonnie one last hug, Xander let her go and stood up. Bonnie went to sit in Spike's lap and Xander ignored the way Giles' mouth came open in either shock or disapproval. Xander didn't have time for him. "This is my family, so I'm going to hit that thing with everything I have."

"Which is?" Kennedy asked.

Tara stood up next to him and Xander crossed his arms. "A machine gun or two, a rocket launcher, some semi-automatic weaponry and an assortment of grenades. You can get a lot at the army-navy store." Xander gave her a nasty grin. "And if that doesn't work, construction-worker Xander can get high-grade explosives. So, if this thing is big enough to give Buffy a run for her money, I'm going to be there knocking it on its ass every chance I get. An army doesn't let the general go into the fight without backup."

"Protective magic can give Buffy an edge," Tara said. "Since this thing is trying to get me to use magic, I won't use it aggressively, but I can reinforce Buffy's healing ability and provide her with some magical stamina without doing anything that could be drained off and used by the First. There's old folk magic that was designed to fight the fey, and I know most of it," Tara said firmly.

"Good on you," Spike said. "I'd offer to help, but...."

"Don't worry about it Spike," Xander said. "As soon as we kick First ass, he'll be hurting too much to go crawling through your brain. And can I just say that he's a brave, brave demon for wanting to be up there. You gross me out on such a regular basis, I'd be scared to go in there." Xander teased Spike.

Spike got a look of exaggerated indignation. "Oi. You know you're turned on by the thought of me and Angelus romping between the sheets."

"Ew," one of the girls blurted out.

"Exactly," Xander agreed. "Angel and sex. Ew, ew, ew."

"Geez, are you ever going to lay off Angel?" Buffy asked with a wrinkle of her nose.

"Nope. I'm an unforgiving bastard. Sorry," Xander offered. "So, are we up for kicking ass?"

Buffy looked at them. "Yep, we are. If this thing thinks he's going to mess with my family, he has another thought coming. Now my house? Clearly, he can mess with that all he wants. So, any chance we can crash here?" Buffy gave him a pleading expression.

Xander looked over at the girls and then at Tara. They could move down to the lowest level and leave the potentials in the first basement. It would put Bonnie behind the line of fire if the First found them, and they'd still have access to the escape tunnels. He couldn't turn Buffy away, but he wouldn't put his daughter in danger.

"We have four bedrooms in the first basement, and Bonnie and I can move down a level, but Tara keeps her room if she wants it. We also have one bedroom on this level, but it has a ghost that tends to wake up anyone who sleeps there if so much as a drop of rain touches the house."

"A family guardian spirit?" Giles asked with a familiar light in his eye. Xander was guessing the man was going to be up all night trying to talk to the dead.

"He always liked Mommy and me," Bonnie said. "He wouldn't warn Granddame when Daddy came over, and she was afraid that the house was dangerous because Daddy brought a vampire here. She was afraid the vampire would come back and burn the house and Natyet wouldn't warn the family."

"And he has never attempted to drive any of you out?" Giles asked.

"It's just ghost, Giles," Xander said as he studied his daughter. Clearly she had some talent in keeping secrets. Then again, Xander had never talked about her family because he never wanted to upset her. Looking back, he suspected that he didn't want to upset himself by learning any of these dark family secrets.

"A family guardian is hardly just a ghost," Giles muttered. "Girls, we'll get settled, but I dare say this will be the safest place for us."

"I'm going to lock down the shutters," Xander said.

"I should start some spells," Tara said.

"I'm going to lay here and ache," Buffy said.

Xander looked at her face. Most of the bruising would be gone tomorrow, but she had to hurt like hell. "I think you earned it," Xander said. "So, you heal up because if it's a war this thing wants, you're still our general, and we need to you kick some ass."

"Hell yes," Buffy agreed. "Just maybe not today. Oh, and can someone call Willow at school and tell her we're here? The house is really trashed, and she's going to think we're all dead if she sees the hellmouthy fun."

"You got it," Xander agreed, heading for the phone before starting work on the shutters. Weirdly, it felt good to have demon hunting to do.