Baby Steps
Seven 100 or 200 words drabbles set in the Baby Steps universe and first posted on the Live Journal Community BabyStepsVerse
Maryan
The almost five-year-old little girl stops running through the
backyard, giving up on trying to catch the pretty firefly. Skipping,
she returns to her parents. They are sitting on the steps and watching
her indulgently, her dad’s arm around her mom’s waist, her mom’s head
against her dad’s shoulder. She climbs on their touching knees, makes
herself comfortable in their twin embrace. She doesn’t know that, a
little more than four years before, on these same steps, her mom gave
her to her dad for the first time. Doesn’t know that, without her, they
wouldn’t be here today.
They know.
* * * * *
Sunlight
Buffy suppressed a sigh as she walked out on the deck to find Spike smoking and brooding.
“She is sorry. She promised not to do it again.”
His only reaction was a small shrug. Rolling her eyes at his stubbornness, she sat down next to him.
“She’s just a little girl,” she tried again. “She didn’t understand…”
“No,
luv,” he interrupted quietly. “She understands I can’t go out in the
sun. And that’s exactly why she went out, so I wouldn’t make her clean
her room. So I couldn’t get to her.”
His hand slid into
hers, and as she felt it shake against her skin, as she heard his next
words, she understood. He wasn’t angry at their five years old
Princess. He was scared.
“What if she had walked into the street instead of the backyard? What if…”
She silenced his fears the best way she knew – with a kiss.
“Explain to her,” she suggested. “Tell her you were afraid. It will probably work better than any punishment.”
Spike nodded, and pulled her onto his lap so that he could bury his face in the crook of her neck.
“In a moment. Just want to hold you now.”
* * * * *
Halloween 5
Through the half open door, Buffy peeked into the room. The sun had
disappeared and the heavy curtains had been pulled, plunging Maryan’s
bedroom into complete obscurity. Two flashlights were breaking the dark
though. One was casting an eerie glow on Spike’s vamped out face, the
other on Maryan’s red-dotted features.
Their
Princess had fallen to chickenpox only a couple of days before
Halloween, and had been inconsolable when she realized she wouldn’t get
to wear the Little Red Riding Hood costume her grandma had made, so
long ago, for her mom. It had taken a lot of cajoling to convince her
that the costume could be altered again, and she could wear it the next
year if she wanted, although Buffy suspected she would decide on
something else long before that.
Right now, though, the Little
Red Riding Hood was the center of a strangely twisted story, where the
wolf seemed to have fangs and the grandma a stake. Maybe she ought to
talk to Spike about his fairytales choices. She listened a little
longer, watched Spike act out all the characters, caught him winking at
her, and decided that there was nothing wrong with his story after all.
* * * * *
Halloween 17
For this Halloween party and the best costume award, Maryan had two
great advantages. First, her best friend was a real make-up artist –
Karen was actually considering going to Hollywood after they finished
high school in June. Second, Maryan could draw. Not as well as her
father, of course, but he had a hundred years of practice.
She
made a drawing of herself as Karen was to transform her, and they
locked themselves in the bathroom for hours until the mask was perfect.
Karen left to get ready, and Maryan put the last touches to her
costume. Black jeans and t-shirt, a blood red shirt borrowed from her
father’s closet, yellow contact lenses she had bought for the occasion.
When she was ready at last, she bounced down the steps to show her
parents. She could hear them in the kitchen, laughing, flirting, and
could only hope she wouldn’t interrupt anything embarassing.
The
laughs died at the instant they saw her. Her mother’s eyes widened; her
father’s closed tight. Neither of them said a word. Head low, she
returned to the bathroom, wondering how she would explain to Karen she
had decided not to go as a vampire after all.
* * * * *
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
“And the blue one over there… That’s Vega. In the constellation of the Lyra.”
Eyes followed the pointed finger’s lead toward the twinkling star that had just been named.
“That’s a pretty one,” Maryan commented. “How about that big one?”
“Not a star, sweetness. A planet. Saturn.”
More
names followed. More than Buffy could remember, and she let the
exchange wash over her without really taking it in. She had never known
Spike could name the stars until he had taken them here and started
teaching both of them. She enjoyed being there, of course, her head
nestled against Spike’s shoulder, Maryan on his other side, a blanket
spread under them and the summer sky over their heads with its infinity
of stars. But she could appreciate the beauty of it all without giving
a name to these silent witnesses of her patrols.
“What about this one, Dad?”
For the first time, Spike hesitated.
“I don’t remember, luv. We can look it up later.”
“Can we give it a special name?”
“Sure. What will you call it?”
“Can we call it Mommy and the one next to it Daddy so you’ll always be there when I look at the sky?”
* * * * *
A-
History class. Maryan was bored. The teacher was rambling about World
War Two, and transforming one of the most complex periods of the recent
history into something dull, boring and utterly senseless.
Also,
there was that paper that Maryan had shoved in her school bag as soon
as she had read the comments written on the last page. A fucking minus.
She had all the facts, all the ideas, she had even done research in
real history books and not simply used the textbook. Had the teacher
noticed that? No, of course not. She had only noticed that Maryan’s
sentences were ‘too long’. Apparently, writing sentences with more than
five words in them was a bad thing when you were in tenth grade.
Long
after the bell had rung, Maryan was still seething. All the way home,
she mumbled under her breath all the things she hadn’t said in class
because she couldn’t afford to get in trouble at school again. As she
reached home, she left her bag in the hall and went straight to find
her father.
“Where were you during the second world war?” she asked him without preamble. “Can you tell me about it?”
Spike smiled.
* * * * *
Official Photographer
At Maryan’s birth, Dawn had appointed herself official photographer of
her niece. Her resolve took a new turn when Spike returned, and stayed.
The first few pictures were taken for a simple and somewhat selfish
reason. She had realized, after he had left two years and half before,
that she didn’t have one single picture of him, and she remedied to
that. When the shots were developed, when she saw how adorable he
looked when taking care of Maryan – and she knew better than to say
that in front of him – a new idea bloomed in her mind. Seeing how they
were acting so far, both Buffy and Spike might need a few pointers to
show them what a great family they could make for Maryan. And so she
began keeping her camera ready to fire at all times. When December
came, she had dozens of pictures to choose from.
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The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.