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Spike showed up just as the sun was rising, safely ensconced behind the tinted windows of his car, and spent a good five minutes in a mental debate with himself regarding whether or not Jenny was expecting him to ring the doorbell. The problem was solved when Jenny made herself visible—hurrying out of the apartment in a t-shirt and sweats that didn’t look quite right on a lady he’d only ever known in blouses and respectably professional skirts—and tugged the passenger-side door open, getting in without a word. She looked as rigid and tearful as she had sounded on the phone.
“I don’t exactly know the way,” said Spike carefully.
Wordlessly, Jenny shoved a printed-out map in his direction, then flattened herself against the passenger door.
Spike swallowed. Easy as it would be to just start driving, the thought of Jenny having no one to talk to in this moment just didn’t feel right. She looked like Dru had, sometimes—small and forlorn, like the world had chewed her up and spit her out. She reminded him of Dru quite a lot, sometimes.
Uncomfortably, he said, “D’you want to—”
“No.”
“Didn’t even let me—”
“Whatever it is, just, just—” Jenny drew in a tearful breath through her teeth. “Look, I called you because you’re probably the only person who’s not gonna tell anyone about this, not because I want to spill my guts about something that has to happen. And unless you’re gonna get all conservative-white-male on me about the baby’s right to be born—”
Quietly, Spike said, “You said the Watcher doesn’t know, that’s all.” Jenny stiffened. “And I’m not gonna ask why,” he added firmly, “’cause I reckon that’s none of my business—”
“You reckon correctly,” said Jenny coolly.
“—but for some bloody unfathomable reason,” Spike continued, ignoring Jenny’s interruption, “he’s the one you set your cap on.” He hesitated. “Can’t imagine it’s easy for you, not having him here to talk to in a moment like this.”
Jenny let out a derisive laugh that sounded very much as though it could collapse into a sob at any second. “You’d be surprised!” she said.
“Don’t think I would,” said Spike, making a careful right turn. “He’s not been well, these days.”
He was very careful not to look at Jenny when he said that. He wasn’t quite sure if she’d see his statement as a slight against the Watcher. It wasn’t meant as such, but Jenny always seemed ready to assume that he thought the worst of the useless, alcoholic bastard. (He did, but that was beside the point.)
Jenny laughed again. Or, no—no—
Spike stopped the car abruptly enough that they jolted forward a bit, but Jenny didn’t notice; she had buried her face in her hands as she began to cry. He was reminded of her, in that moment—that same kind of desperate, half-hidden misery that they both didn’t know how to show to anyone that mattered to them. A gentle Atlas unwilling to share the burden. Because it was the only thing he knew he could share, he said, “Ever tell you about that one time I almost shot the Slayer?”
That got Jenny’s attention. Raising her head from her hands, she stared incredulously at him as though trying to piece together what had led her to this moment in time. Very slowly, she said, “What.”
“Got a gun and everything,” said Spike. “Wanted to feel a bit more of a man about it.” There was a sense of perverse satisfaction at the look on her face; awful as it was, he’d horrified her enough to take her mind off whatever had been rattling about in there. “Didn’t take, obviously—”
Jenny almost smiled. “She kicked your ass, didn’t she?”
Spike thought of the tear tracks on Buffy’s face. “In a manner of speaking.”
The half-smile lingered for longer than he’d expected. “I keep thinking,” said Jenny, “that if I hadn’t—” She shook her head a little and didn’t say anything else.
Spike scoffed. “Bollocks to you blaming yourself, Ms. Calendar,” he said. “You weren’t nearly close enough to save her.” I was, he thought. I was close enough. I had it in my hands and I didn’t—
“I know I couldn’t have saved Buffy,” said Jenny a little acidly. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I—” She swallowed, then closed her eyes. Unsteadily, she said, “Rupert, he—he never wanted to be Buffy’s dad. And I was always telling him, you know, she sees you that way, it’s not gonna hurt to step up and be that for her. And then after a while he—”
Spike’s disbelieving laugh cut her off in the middle of a sentence. Doing his best to push down a rush of indignant frustration—and failing miserably—he said without preamble, “When are you gonna cut yourself the kind of slack you cut the Watcher?”
Jenny’s eyes flew open, furious and miserable. “I’m not cutting him slack—”
“You think you pushed him into being her dad?” Spike laughed, then laughed again, because the thought of the Watcher putting up any kind of real resistance to fatherhood was bloody hilarious. The way his face had lit up when Buffy had wanted him to walk her down the aisle— “He’d do anything you say, mind, we all know that, but this one isn’t something you had to push him into. Bloody hell,” he raised a hand to theatrically wipe a tear from his face, “you’ve got me fucking tearing up.”
Something in Jenny’s stiffly angry expression was beginning to waver. Unsteadily, she said, “I still should’ve—”
“Should’ve nothing,” said Spike, his smile fading into a fiercely intent expression. “He’s not well right now and it’s nothing to do with you. Nothing you can do about it.”
Jenny swallowed. “Nothing but what I’m doing now,” she said.
And then Spike understood. “You didn’t tell him about this because you know that he can’t be a father,” he said, feeling something uncomfortably close to nausea. “You haven’t told him because you know he’ll want to be a father again and do it right this time.” And Christ, the thought of someone like Jenny making this choice on her lonesome was almost more than he could bear. For the first time, he wished quite powerfully that he meant enough to her to comfort her in a moment like this.
Jenny’s eyes were blank and empty when she looked at him again. She didn’t say anything for a very long time. “I want this baby,” she finally said. “With him. But he’s not—it isn’t—” She swallowed. “He’s not well,” she said helplessly. “He’s—he’s drinking, and he won’t talk to me, and all he wants to do if he’s not drinking is lie in my arms like dead weight. A-and I’m afraid of what could happen if I even brought up the possibility of a baby of our own, let alone the reality of one.”
“It isn’t right for you to let go of something you want just because he’s not in a place to handle it,” said Spike quietly.
It disturbed him when Jenny’s response wasn’t to fiercely snap back that he was out of line. She didn’t take kindly to familiarity on his part; rather, she treated it with the same indignant fury that Buffy always had. It was part of the reason that he was in this car right now, really.
“You know you were always—her mum, a bit,” he said. “In quite a lot of ways that mattered.”
Jenny let out a soft, bitter breath and shook her head a little.
“Don’t see why old Rupert gets the credit when it comes to being there for those kids and you can’t take even some of it,” said Spike casually, “never mind that he wouldn’t have been there half as much if not for you shoving him out the door.”
“You are so absurdly kind to me,” said Jenny.
The bluntness of her statement took Spike aback; phrased that simply, it made him feel almost afraid. Kindness, if noted, had never gotten him very far with these people. He’d learned to hide it in ways that they could better understand. “Wouldn’t call it kind, exactly,” he said carefully. “Might call it an investment.”
“In what?” Jenny looked wryly up at him. “We all know you’ve only got eyes for—” Her half-smile faltered. She didn’t finish her sentence. “I do mean it, though, Spike. I’ve never understood how you can be so patient with me and so awful with pretty much everybody else.”
“Wouldn’t say I’m awful with the bit,” said Spike. “Or with Red’s girl, for that matter.” Jenny kept looking at him. He forced a smile, then said, “Look, Calendar, it’s—”
“I’ve been really honest with you,” said Jenny. “I think I’m entitled to some honesty in return.”
“There’s no entitled to it,” said Spike with blank bemusement. “I’m evil. How is it possible that all of you keep forgetting that?”
“Because you’re the one person I knew I could call to drive me to Planned Parenthood,” said Jenny without missing a beat. “Because I knew that you would say yes, and I was right, and right now we’re in a car together and you are giving me good advice about my marriage.”
“You hate my advice!”
“I hate it because you’re right!” Tears had sprung to Jenny’s eyes, but there was a determined anger to her words. “You are right that my husband is falling apart and you are right that I’m giving up too much to put him back together and you’re right that I’m—that I was—” Her voice broke; she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she spoke again, it was measured and thin, fragile as spun glass.
“When Buffy was sixteen,” she said, “she was—you came to Sunnydale a year after I met her for the first time, so she was a little older then. You never knew her before she died the first time. And I never knew her before she was a Slayer, so she was always—there was always still a gravity to her, because she’d had to see things that most kids her age would have puked their guts out to even hear about. But we met for the first time when she came in to meet Willow after class, and she was such a polite kid. I remember that so well. I remember how I’d heard about this delinquent on the verge of dropping out, failing her classes, barely following the reading, and then there was this polite little girl waiting in the doorway for her friend. She didn’t interrupt class, she didn’t do anything to cause a problem. She just waited until I was done talking to Willow—I think I’d pulled her aside to tell her about extra credit or something—and then she came up to me and she said hi, Ms. Calendar, and—and she gave me this big smile.”
Spike felt like he might shatter and break, hearing that.
“Just this—this big smile. Like she didn’t care what I knew about her already, or maybe hadn’t even thought of it, and I—” Jenny tilted her head back, tears spilling down her cheeks. “She was so little,” she said. “Always. Always so tiny. Even when she was twenty, she’d—I never knew how to tell her that I—”
Without thinking about it, Spike reached for Jenny’s hand. She took it readily, lacing their fingers tightly together—then tipped forward, pressing her face into his worn leather jacket. She let out a shaking sob, and then it was as though a dam had opened; tightly gripping his arm with her free hand, she began to really cry.
He’d known, of course. Always had. What he hadn’t known was that she’d known too.
“I’m not supposed to hurt like this,” Jenny sobbed.
Softly, Spike said, “You were her mum.”
“She had one and it wasn’t me!”
“She had a dad too, didn’t she?” It was easier, without the full force of Jenny’s knowing scrutiny, to raise a careful hand to her head. She shuddered at his touch, but it seemed more out of exhausted relief than displeasure, and her shoulders began to relax as he stroked her hair. “Didn’t stop old Rupert from stepping in.”
“Joyce—”
“Did what she could,” said Spike. “Still wasn’t gonna talk to her about dating a vampire, now, was she? From what Buffy told me, you’ve got a bit of experience with destiny yourself.” He let his hand drop, tucking his thumb under Jenny’s chin to gently tug her face up. “She needed a mum like you.”
Jenny’s face crumpled and she tried to pull away. Spike held her fast. “Spike,” she whispered, “I just, I-I can’t, I—”
“You asked me why I was kind to you,” said Spike. “Reckon you are owed an answer, and it’s this: I’m kind to you because you’re the sort of woman Buffy would’ve grown up to be someday. Rupert knows it, the kids know it, hell, even Buffy knew it, and I didn’t quite think that you knew what you were to her till you started crying about it just now.”
“I know what she was to me,” said Jenny, empty and miserable. “That’s different.”
“Christ,” said Spike, and dropped his hands, pulling exasperatedly back. The motion seemed to jolt Jenny into wakefulness, and she jerked out of his arms with a sort of cartoonish panic that he might have laughed at under better circumstances. “You can’t honestly tell me that you didn’t know she loved you.”
Jenny’s eyes dropped and she didn’t say anything.
“This is why I’ve half a mind to punch the Watcher’s fucking teeth in, you know,” said Spike. “He doesn’t take care of you, Calendar. No one does. No one would’ve taken care of Buffy if not for you.” He stared fiercely at her, wishing he could will the truth through her thick bloody skull. “You gave her a place to be a fucking mess when her mum was dying,” he said. “You’d go over there and take care of the girls and you’d drag your useless lump of a husband along with you, and when her idiot of a boyfriend left her, you were the one telling her it wasn’t anything she’d done. That’s why I’m good to you.” He could feel tears in his own eyes when he remembered—that unsteady relief on Buffy’s face, those months after Joyce’s death, when Jenny would walk into the room and sort the bills and the dishes without hesitation. “You were an amazing mum to her.”
Jenny raised her head again, looking up at him with that same expression he had seen on Buffy’s face a thousand years ago. “I can’t afford to be—to have been her mom,” she said. “Because—Rupert was her dad, and he’s—”
“Being a fucking wanker,” said Spike.
“Spike.”
“You’re grieving, same as him, and he’s wallowing in his own fucking self-pity to the point where his wife’s stealing out of the house to get a vampire to drive her to the abortion clinic,” said Spike testily. “You said it yourself, Calendar, you know I’m right about this—”
“I do know you’re right about this,” said Jenny, which surprised Spike so much that he actually stopped talking. “I just…” She exhaled shakily. “I just don’t know what to do, if not this,” she said. “Even outside of Rupert, I’m not in a place to raise a baby responsibly right now, no matter how much I want one, but—”
“Never said that the abortion’s the wrong choice,” said Spike quietly. “Only that you shouldn’t be doing it with me in the driver’s seat.”
“I don’t want it to be the right choice,” said Jenny.
“Yeah,” said Spike.
“I—” Jenny sniffled, then said, “If she was here—”
“We wouldn’t be here,” said Spike. “You and the Watcher would be off picking out paint swatches for the nursery, tryin’ to figure out how to tell Buffy without getting her jealous.”
Jenny laughed, watery and unsteady, and said, “Oh, she’d have been so jealous.”
“Hell on earth if it had been a girl—”
“Can you imagine? I’d have to name the baby Annie as some kind of stopgap measure.”
They realized in the same moment that they were smiling at each other, and Spike felt a shy rush of warmth. Brusquely, he averted his gaze and said, “Should get you driving before he notices you’re gone, yeah?”
“He won’t,” said Jenny.
Spike hesitated. Then he said, “If there’s anything—”
“Spike, if there’s anything that can be done for him, I don’t think it’ll be something you can help with,” said Jenny, not unkindly.
“You know I’m not asking about that idiot,” said Spike derisively. “I’m asking about—”
“If there’s anything that can be done for me,” said Jenny. She swallowed, and tried again. “If there’s anything that can be done for me, it’s—getting him back.”
Oh, the poor girl. “He’s still there, you know,” said Spike. “It’s still him treating you like you missing her isn’t half as important as the way he feels about it.” But there was a blank misery in Jenny’s eyes that made it clear she wasn’t ready to confront that bit just yet, so he sighed and turned his eyes back towards the road. “Let me know, though,” he said. “If you want to…drive, and keep driving. We could take Dawn, make a picnic of it—you know she’ll go anywhere you are, these days.”
“She’ll go anywhere we are,” said Jenny. “She loves you.”
There was no reproach in the statement, no maternal protectiveness; he had gotten used to it, and missed it. He missed when she was happy enough to hate him with all the vengeance she couldn’t turn on Angelus. He missed so many things that they would never get back.
“I wanted better, you know,” he said. “For her.” There was no need to elaborate on who he was talking about. “Even if it wasn’t with me. It didn’t need to be with me. Loved her well enough to have it be from a distance, so long as she was—happy.”
“But she wasn’t,” said Jenny quietly.
“Not for long enough, at least,” said Spike. “Not the kind she deserved.” He swallowed tightly. “Wouldn’t be so hard, would it, if she’d spent the last year of her life—happy?”
Jenny let her head fall back against the passenger seat as they began to drive. The sun was beginning to come up. Uncomfortably, she said, “I, um, they’re gonna need somebody to pick me up after, and—”
Spike reached over and placed his hand over hers.