Summary: Life can be difficult when you are fifteen years old with a baby and few options. Fortunately Buffy Summers is a resourceful girl. Spuffy. All human AU in Four Parts. It's a high school fic with actual high school coming up in Parts Two thru Four. This is a very long saga and will be completed. NOTE : The ratings and warnings I am giving for this story do not represent the entire story - they allow for occasional forays into difficult subjects, but most chapters do not dwell there. It's not a fluffy story, but it is not unrelentingly grim. Like life, it flows among the highs and lows. IMPORTANT: Although Parts One and Two are rated R, beginning in Part Three the story will move into some NC-17 territory. ‘The Song Remains the Same’ consists of Parts One and Two. When we move into Part Three it will start a new posted ‘story’ so that I can reflect the new rating. Also, Parts One and Two are quite long enough on their own. / Winner of 'Judge's Pick' in Round 11 of Spuffy Awards and Winner of Best Fantasy Angst and Best Fantasy Author in Round 12 of the Spuffy Awards
Author's Note: Once again you guys amaze me. Thank you for all the reviews. I wanted to say, outside of the review responses, that the social-services-legal-foster-care-system is something that I consider to be an actual character in the story, and that is why I give it so much thought and want you to understand it as much as you can within the context of the story. To me it's like a much more heavily intrusive Watcher's Council in the canon series. So I do apologize to those readers who couldn't care less about it, and I totally understand where you might be coming from, but I do need to explain things from time to time and beg your indulgence. There is no need for anyone to know more about it than what is required for the story, however, and my author's notes are mostly directed to specific questions readers have or to my perception of general misunderstandings that I pick up while reading reviews. There will be no pop quizzes.
The story itself, however, is bigger than that aspect of it, and ultimately is a love story and a story about growing up and family and the part that destiny plays in our lives. It is not a story about foster care. It is a story about Buffy first, then about Spike as he becomes more and more entangled in her life. Anyway, thank you for reading and reviewing and being patient with the process. And on to the story ...
Disclaimer: The characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox studios. This story is not meant to infringe upon anyone's rights, only to entertain.
********************************* Uneasy
Sunday
When she got off the bus Buffy stopped and took a shaky breath, her anxiety having increased with every long mile leading to the Social Services Satellite Office and Visitation Center in Carlton. It was late Sunday morning, and time for her second visitation with Katie.
Although part of her couldn't wait to see her daughter and had longed all week for this day to come, another more frightened part of her dreaded it with her whole being. Last week's visit had practically torn her apart, and she just didn't know how she could live through another one. The fact that there were more than a dozen yet to go she wouldn't even permit herself to consider. In the substance abuse group they talked about handling sobriety one day at a time, and if that proved to be too difficult then to take it one hour at a time, or one minute at a time. She didn't share their dependence on drugs or alcohol, but her separation from Katie seemed as difficult to her as overcoming any addiction could be. She made herself remember that she just needed to survive this until she got Katie back again, and if she had to do it a day, an hour, or a minute at a time, then that's what she'd have to do. She could do it. She had to.
She walked across the street carrying her bag of small presents with her, scanning the other people in the parking lot and entrance for signs that any of them might be Katie's foster parents. She couldn't tell anything by looking at them, and she wasn't sure if she was relieved or frustrated by that fact. She was conflicted. She wanted to know who was taking care of her daughter, but was also afraid to know, fearing that it would be harder if she knew and didn't like the people. Or harder maybe if she did like the people. She was so confused. She knew that she needed to be enough of an adult to face these things, good and bad, both for herself and for her daughter. She knew that she needed to be strong, to stand tall, to fight for herself and her baby and she knew that she had to do it on their terms. They made all the rules and held most of the cards. She was dealing with the adult world to a degree that she had never even contemplated previously; this was the big league, and these people could crush her if she let them. She couldn't let them.
This time she had no one to hold her hand or advise her, having told Tanya last week that she wanted to do this alone. Last week she'd been so devastated by the visit and still reeling from the number of things she had to do to please these people that she had let her anguish and anger lead her to dismiss any assistance from her case worker. She was starting to regret that decision as she entered the building and tried to remember what needed to be done to begin the visit. After some false starts she was finally in the visitation room, waiting for Katie to be brought to her.
As soon as she saw her baby come to her in the arms of the worker on duty, everything else fell away. This was why she was doing this, this was what it was all about. For a few hours, she had her baby in her arms again.
Hours later the worker took Katie and the little presents back to the foster mother. Buffy remained sitting on the floor, afraid to speak or move for fear of shattering into a million pieces. She didn't want anyone to see how much this affected her; she was terrified that they would see her weakness and hold it against her. She sat very still trying to force the anguish down, so that she could leave and get back on that bus. She had to get control back. She couldn't let them see her like this. She had to be calm, to be in control. She had to be calm. She had to be in control. She had to be calm ...
The worker on duty had given Katie back to the foster mother, and was simply waiting for Buffy to leave the room and sign out. When Buffy hadn't come out after fifteen minutes, she grew concerned. The information she had on this particular parent was that she was extremely young, but she was not considered an actual danger to her child and had no specific problems that would require active supervision of her visits. She was in foster care too, and that meant that there was probably no family support for this girl. She was virtually alone, and the worker knew that had to be very difficult for her. She decided to poke her head in the room to see if there was some problem.
What she saw was a young girl sitting on the floor, holding her arms tightly around herself, visibly trying to calm herself down, trying to control her breathing, trying to control her emotions. She didn't think Buffy even knew she had entered the room, she was concentrating so hard on reining in her emotions.
Her heart broke for her, so she knelt down and put her arms around her.
"It's okay to cry, anyone would be upset by this, just let it out sweetheart, no one here is gonna judge you for being upset. I know I'd be beside myself if I had to see my baby just a few hours a week like this, anyone would. It's okay, you're gonna get through this and it'll be all right ..." she just kept the soft sympathetic words coming, trying to penetrate the wall Buffy was trying to keep up, knowing that she couldn't live behind such barriers for very long without doing herself some damage. Her entire body was taut with the effort of physically trying to get control of herself and not breakdown.
When at last the walls came down, Buffy fell apart in the woman's arms, laid her head down in her lap, and let herself be held and soothed while she sobbed, until there were no more tears left to fall.
~~~~~~~~
It was just after dark when Buffy let herself into the house and, carefully avoiding her foster parents, quietly went upstairs to her room. After washing her face in the bathroom, she changed into a little blue t-shirt and baggy red plaid pajama bottoms, and lay down on her still-made bed, staring out the window at the moon rising over the trees. She left the lights off; she wanted to wrap herself inside the darkness, draw it like a cloak around her. She'd always been in love with the day and the sunshine, but lately she found more comfort in the dark.
She heard the sound of a small 'click', and then slowly the darkness was pushed back a little bit by the soft glow of light coming from the hall. John was in the doorway, watching her. After a few moments he came further into the room, and after some hesitation sat on her bed, near her shoulders. She didn't acknowledge him there, didn't so much as turn her head in his direction. He sat facing her back, and she went on staring out the window at the moon.
The silence was almost a presence with them, there in that room. John lifted a hand and slowly, hesitantly, laid it on her arm. With the other he brushed some hair back from her forehead, letting his hand come to rest on her shoulder. She didn't flinch, didn't move, didn't make a sound. Just kept staring at the moon.
Finally he rose and left, shutting the door softly behind him. Walking quickly back from her room, he made his way down the stairs and to the kitchen where he knew both dinner and Rosemary were waiting. He never saw Glory standing in a doorway at the other end of the hall, watching as he left Buffy's room.
~~~~~~~
Monday
The next day Buffy was supposed to study with Willow, who was now officially on her holiday vacation. Buffy thought that tutoring someone you barely knew during your own vacation week was going well beyond the call of duty, and was grateful that Willow was willing to spend that time with her. However she didn't want to study that day, and called Willow to cancel, telling her that they could meet again as scheduled, on Wednesday. She heard the hesitancy in Willow's voice when she called, but assured her that everything was fine and that she'd just had a long weekend with the family and Christmas and all, and needed some 'alone time' right now. Willow was uncertain, but accepted Buffy's explanation and agreed to see her Wednesday morning instead.
Buffy kept to herself as much as possible the whole day, coming out for an occasional snack or light meal, and avoiding any contact with the other members of the household, which included Glory for another few days. She knew she should study, but found herself unable to concentrate. She spent some time looking out the window, but as the morning wore on she became too restless to do that any longer. Something had broken inside of her on Sunday, and she felt a sudden strong urge to do something. Something different, something personal, something that reflected who she really was, who she was becoming.
She decided to go through her clothes and try to put together a somewhat different personal style for herself. She wanted to reflect less the 'good child' look and adopt more of an older teen style, to be more sexual, to be more creative. She knew she needed to be seen as responsible and mature, to convince the powers-that-be that she was capable of being a good mother to her daughter. But that didn't mean she had to look like she was a cross between Alice in Wonderland and a thirty year old soccer mom. Her style had been drifting since she first discovered she was pregnant, and she hadn't grown in the way that she now thought she should have done, the way other girls her age had done.
Before her pregnancy, she'd been a fourteen year old high school freshman, wearing uniforms to school since kindergarten. And outside of school she wore 'tasteful' casual clothes that she was forced to get approved by her mother. That was the rule: if her mother and father were paying for it, then they got final approval on it. She had been stifled then, and hated that she had nothing that really reflected her own self fully.
Then there were the sexy little dresses she borrowed from friends to wear to parties. Her mother never would have let her buy the dresses she needed for those parties, so she had none of her own to speak of. She had been playing make-believe after hours, pretending to be older and sexier than she was in order to get into the parties she and her friends decided they wanted to attend. But that's all it had been -- make-believe, and she wore what magazines and her friends told her she should wear. And the boys seemed to like it. Too much so, as it turned out.
Then her pregnancy intervened, and real fashion choices took a distant second to the horror of maternity wear. The clothes were designed for the young married mother and the 'fashion' was simple and relatively inexpensive. It was a wardrobe not meant to be long term, and her mother refused to spend any real money on clothes that were a reminder of Buffy's transgressions, and were in any case just temporary. She told Buffy that she would be permitted to buy better clothes once she was home again and things were again 'normal'. The whole pregnancy Buffy had been saving her allowance for that very thing.
When she'd gone to Faith her circumstances were drastically different, and her savings became travel and living expenses rather than money for new, better clothes. She had no real money of her own for several months, and although she had had success re-working and creating good clothes from thrift store items, and Fred had been a wonderful mentor, she knew that the results were more suited to a breastfeeding young mother than to an edgy young thing with her whole life ahead of her. It was as though she'd gone from fourteen to thirty in a matter of months, and she was so preoccupied that she rarely questioned it. She knew she looked good, but she didn't look the way she thought she wanted to. Not any more.
School was going to start at the end of January, and she needed a change. She needed to find out who the hell she was, what she wanted, what she wanted her clothes to say about her. She knew she wasn't ready to assume the conservative soccer mom look, and she was far beyond the excited faux party girl she had been as a freshman. No, she wanted something different, something that expressed who she was inside, who she wanted to be. Something that spoke of her move away from the bright sunny cheerleader and party girl into darker, more worldly places. She would never be that sunny little cheerleader again. It was time she started dressing like it.
She'd have to build on what she already owned, which was considerable if she counted the clothes packed in storage. Both hers and Faith's clothes were in storage. She had a lot to work with if she looked at Faith's clothes, too. Faith's style was certainly different. Lots of black, lots of leather, interesting clothing and accessories -- that was Faith. Buffy thought it sounded promising as a source, and Faith owed her this much, having put her in this position in the first place. If Faith ever returned, Buffy would give her her things back again. Once she kicked her ass, of course.
Yes, that's exactly what she would do. She'd draw some ideas and look in the current fashion magazines, go see what the edgier stores were stocking now, and then use the clothes she had, both hers and Faith's, and see if she couldn't create something uniquely herself before school started.
Too soon she realized it was time to go to the substance abuse meeting at the community health center. Spike would be picking her up afterwards for their second date, so it was important that she dress up somewhat for the meeting. She looked over what she had done today and sighed in frustration. Now that she had made up her mind what she wanted to do she wanted to get started immediately. She'd have to get those stored clothes tomorrow, perhaps after she saw Olivia.
She showered and dressed quickly, and took the bus to the center.
~~~~~~~~
There were five minutes until the meeting started, and Buffy was busy using way too much sugar and creamer, hoping to make a very bad cup of coffee drinkable. She took a sip.
*Bleah*
"Well, hello Strawberry," came a slimy voice from her left, followed by an arm reaching for a donut.
She knew that voice. She knew that arm. She had to fight the urge to break that arm.
"Don't call me that," she snapped.
"Oooh, hit a nerve," he taunted with a grin.
"No, not a nerve, it's just not true," she shot back.
"Riiight,"
"Fuck you," she started heading toward the circle of chairs.
"Anytime. Strawberry," he leered and waggled his tongue suggestively when she glanced his way. He followed her over to the chairs, taking a seat on the opposite side so he could spend the meeting watching her. She was young, she was beautiful, and she let him get under her skin. And that wasn't the only thing he wanted under her. He watched her sip her coffee, trying to ignore him. That wasn't gonna work.
*There ... there ... there!*
She glanced his way briefly and his face broke into a slow smile. She glared at him and turned her head, trying to ignore him again.
*Oh, yeah, baby. I'm gonna have you, just you wait.*
Buffy left the building, having once again refused to say anything in the meeting. Warren appeared to be making it his goal in life to torment her, and she spent the entire meeting trying to avoid looking in his direction. Warren, for his part, spent the entire meeting staring straight at her. She was pissed, and weirdly unnerved. That guy gave her the creeps in a way that even Zack hadn't. She wanted Warren away desperately.
"Hey, Strawberry," came the hated voice once more.
She sat on a bench, trying to pretend he hadn't followed her out. That was going to be difficult to do as he was now sitting next to her on the bench. The crowd was thinning out now, and it was just a couple of stragglers and Warren left with her in front of the building. Due to the holiday season, other meetings and classes had canceled this week. The building went suddenly dark behind her, and she saw that the last few people had walked or driven off, leaving her alone with Warren on the bench near the street. She wanted to move away, but it was the only illuminated area nearby, and she needed to be visible to Spike when he arrived. She also thought being visible to any chance car driving by would be safer than winding up in a dark spot with Warren. She stayed put on the bench, silent.
"You know, you really should participate more in the meeting. Why, we hardly know anything about you at all." Leering hadn't worked, so he was apparently trying for companionable, friendly.
*Yeah, that'll work.* She continued to ignore him.
"I mean, you say you're not a strawberry, but, well, how would a fellow know if you just clam up?" He was trying to sound reasonable, interested.
*Not enough soap in the world to wash the slime offa you, pal. Stop talking to me.*
She tried to look as though she didn't know he was even there. It was hard, since he was literally making her skin crawl.
"Okay, not a big talker. Fine," he commented blandly. "There are other things you can do with that mouth ... Probably good at them, too. Aren't you, baby?"
He was leering again, and when his words penetrated the wall she was trying to build up between them, Buffy's irritation and fear ratcheted up a couple of notches. She didn't know this guy, but suddenly she was no longer simply disgusted and unnerved by him, but was becoming even more frightened as well. The meeting had ended a little early, and Spike hadn't arrived yet. She was starting to think that she would have to brush off her rusty kickboxing skills and fight this guy if he tried anything physical. She hadn't studied all that long, and she was completely out of practice in the skills she had learned. She hoped that whatever she had retained would be enough.
Just as Warren leaned over to her and opened his mouth for what she assumed was another obnoxious leering comment, she saw Spike pull up in the parking lot. Her hero.
She leaped up and walked quickly over to where Spike had gotten out of the car. He opened his arms for a hug and a quick kiss, never taking his eyes off Warren in the process.
"Hey, pet," he greeted her with a quick smile, then turned his attention back to Warren. "Warren." There was no smile now.
Buffy was surprised that they knew each other. She looked back at Warren, who was standing now and staring intensely at Spike. She looked up again and saw that Spike was staring just as intensely back. No words were spoken between the two, but they continued the staring contest, and Warren finally backed off and left, walking down the street in the opposite direction, calling out a friendly, "See ya next time, Strawberry!" over his shoulder as he went.
Spike looked down at Buffy with a furrowed brow, the question a silent one. She ignored it for now, and burrowed further into his arms. She felt safe with Spike, and wanted to pretend that the whole Warren thing hadn't happened.
Spike could see she was determined to shut down any line of questioning in the Warren area, and decided to let her for now. But he was just as determined to know the answers, and told himself that he'd come back to it later.
"Ready for our date, luv?"
"Oh yeah," she smiled up at him.
He opened the car door for her and shut it softly behind her once she was in. As he walked around to the driver's side, he gazed after Warren, who was still visible far up the street. He didn't like that she knew him, that she was sitting with him, and that he seemed to be so familiar with her. And he really didn't like what he called her as he left. As much as Buffy had already told him about herself, there were still a hell of a lot of things he didn't know about her yet. He had trusted Drusilla implicitly, foolishly, and got nothing but grief and heartache and betrayal for his naiveté. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.
Note: For anyone not familiar with the term, 'strawberry' is a word used to describe a woman, usually a girl, who hangs out at a drug dealer's house and trades her body for drugs.
~~~~~~
No, not every male in this story is plotting to get their hands on Buffy. I am going somewhere with this, so please be patient. It's been a hard week for Buffy, so we're not all fluffy right now. I promise to have some lighter chapters ahead, if you can stick with me through the hard parts too. Like I said, it's a long journey.
As for me, I had some surgery this week and have not personally responded to all reviews yet but I still hope to do so soon. So if you haven't had a response yet I apologize, it's not an intentional slight of any kind. You guys have been terrific and I appreciate every one of you -- those who read and review, and those who simply read. But honestly, reviews rock. So if you can, please do. Thanks. :-)