A.N: Alright, so this is my second chapter posted in less than 24 hours, I'm on a real writing streak right now, so you guys should expect even more within the next few days. This is sort of my way of apologizing for being so late with the updates. I hope you keep reading and keep reviewing.
Buffy stood in front of the open fridge, one hand firmly placed on her hip, the other gripping the fridge handle tightly. The basement door opened and closed behind her but she was too engrossed in her searching to acknowledge it.
"Goddamn it" she muttered under her breath, and slammed the fridge door closed. Behind her, Spike advanced slowly, confusion etched into his face.
"Buffy, are you alright?" he asked, stopping several feet away from the pregnant blonde, who was now throwing open cabinet doors determinedly, searching for something.
"No, I'm not" she mumbled, just low enough that if Spike hadn't had vampiric hearing, he probably wouldn't have caught her words.
"Why not?" he asked, keeping a safe distance away from Buffy, for fear that one of the doors she was yanking open would fly off and hit him in the face.
"Because I want something to eat, but there's nothing in this stupid house" She finally gave up her disgruntled searching, and slammed her palms down on the kitchen island.
"Didn't Willow go grocery shopping yesterday?" He asked, lips fumbling over the unfamiliar name.
"Yeah, for normal people food" Buffy retorted, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at Spike for the first time since he had arrived upstairs. Confusion washed over his face as he attempted to disentangle the meaning behind Buffy's words.
"I don't understand" he admitted finally. Buffy threw her hands up in exasperation, as though it was Spike's fault that there was no edible food in the house.
"I'm pregnant" she pointed out and Spike nodded, feeling ridiculously like he was missing a large part of the puzzle.
"I've noticed that, kind of hard not to" he answered, the sarcastic response rolling easily off of his tongue, as though it was something he was used to, but as usually the fog of amnesia clouded any remembrance of his past.
"I'm pregnant and I have a craving" Buffy said, once again turning to examine the cabinet, as though she had missed something the first time around.
"For what exactly?" Spike asked
"I don't know!" Buffy cried, giving up her search for good, and turning to face Spike, eyes silently pleading for him to understand, to relieve some of her tension.
"So, you have a craving, but you don't know for what, and there's nothing in the house that appeals to you" he said, piecing the puzzle together mentally.
"Yes" Buffy cried, jubilantly, "Can you help me?" Spike shook his head and glanced down at the floor.
"I don't think so; I'm not good with food" Spike caught Buffy nodding out of the corner of his eye.
"Vampire, right" Inspiration struck Spike suddenly and he moved towards the cabinets, looking for something.
"There was something, I heard Dawn and Willow talking about it a few days ago, maybe it'll work"
"What?" Buffy asked, curiously edging towards the vampire. He stopped searching suddenly, hands falling on a package of Oreos and a container of peanut butter. Spike turned to face the Slayer with a triumphant grin on his face, and Buffy couldn't help it, she grinned along with him.
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"So," Buffy said, dipping yet another Oreo into the peanut butter, "You don't remember anything, like at all?"
"Little things" Spike answered, unscrewing the top off of an Oreo and spooning some peanut butter onto it. "Mostly sounds, or feelings, or . . ." He stared at his Oreo intently, as though it hid the secrets of the universe. Buffy edged closer to him, intrigued. They had taken the Oreos and peanut butter up to Buffy's room. Being alone with Spike in her room was something Buffy wouldn't even have thought about a few months ago, but she figured, what with the soul and the amnesia, what could it hurt? She was lying on her side on her bed, her nearly six-month pregnant belly making it impossible to lie on her stomach anymore, and Spike sat on the floor next to her bed.
"Or what?" Buffy asked, curiosity piqued, Spike simply shook his head, refusing to look at Buffy, refusing even to answer her. A wave of annoyance flooded over Buffy, blame it on the pregnancy, blame it on whatever you wanted, but in that moment she missed the old Spike, the one that wouldn't hesitate to say anything, no matter what the repercussions might be.
"Come on, Spike, you can tell me, I'm a pretty good secret keeper"
"Sometimes, I remember you" he said finally, and Buffy, shocked, sat up on her bed, moving closer to Spike.
"What do you mean; you remember me?" she asked, and her sudden overwhelming urge to truly understand what he meant surprised her. She really and truly wanted to know what he meant, and why he meant it.
"I don't remember any specific details, but I remember you. You're just familiar, you know? Sometimes you smile or you laugh and I can't help thinking that I've seen that before, it's just so bloody familiar that it hurts sometimes, not being able to remember where or when I've seen it before" Buffy nodded, looking down at her forgotten Oreo clasped in her hands. Something was brewing in her mind, something was hiding just beneath the surface of her thoughts, something that scared her, both because of the intensity of it and because of the fact that she didn't know what it was. Spike looked up at her then and she felt compelled to meet his gaze.
"I think I loved you" he said, the unmistakable feeling of truth tinged his words and Buffy felt an uncomfortable lump rise in her throat.
"You did" she said
"And I don't think you loved me back" he added, blue eyes burning into her, silently asking if he was right, all the while hoping that he wasn't.
"I didn't" she said finally. Both looked down towards the floor and the forgotten Oreos and peanut butter, an uncomfortable silence settling over them.
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"So what happened after that?" Willow asked, leaning towards her best friend eagerly.
"Nothing" Buffy answered, shrugging her shoulders uselessly, "He made up some excuse about having to go to the blood bank and took off"
"Wow" Willow said, leaning back against her chair. Around them, the Scooby gang was researching any possible explanation for Buffy's pregnancy, so far, there hadn't been any evidence of prophecies concerning their situation, and the only other time a Slayer had been pregnant was back in 1970s, but that time the father had been a plain old human, no vampiric chromosomes added.
"Aha!" Anya cried from across the table, "I found something." The rest of the gang gathered around the ex-vengeance demon, craning to take a look at her computer screen, she had relieved Willow of her laptop earlier, to, in her words: 'Make this stupid piece of crap do something useful for once'. Now her brows knitted together in confusion.
"No, wait, my bad, this says two vampires had a baby, not a vampire and a Slayer"
"Does it say who it was?" Buffy asked, still seated and craning her neck towards the swarm of Scoobies around the laptop. Her back had been hurting more than usual today, shooting uncomfortable stabs of pain throughout her body, so she had made a point of sitting and resting. At her question though, the whole of the Scooby gang suddenly began looking elsewhere, pointedly avoiding Buffy's gaze and her question.
"What?" Anya asked, looking at the rest of the gang looking as confused as Buffy felt. "Why aren't you guys answering Buffy's question? That's rude, you know" she turned to Buffy and said; "It's Angel, Angel and Darla, they had a son, I think it says here his name is Connor" Buffy suddenly felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her stomach. Angel has a son, since when? Why didn't he tell me? Her mind raced with all sorts of questions, most of them springing from the sudden undercurrent of hurt Anya's words had caused.
"Oh" she said, unsure of how to put her emotions into words. Before anyone could question Buffy on her answer, or lack thereof, Giles threw a book down on the table, a wide grin splashed across his face.
"Don't hurt the books, Giles, they have feelings too" Xander joked, trying to relieve some of the tension in the air. Giles just ignored Xander's comment and peered down at his book, one finger tracing his progress along the page.
"Buffy, when were the babies conceived?" he asked, glancing up at the Slayer. Xander held up his hands in a 'too much information' pose.
"Giles, that's a bit personal, don't you think?" This time, Buffy ignored Xander as while, sensing that Giles was on to something, perhaps the something that would solve this whole icky mess once and for all.
"Um," she said, mentally calculating, "Well, if I make it to full term, my due date's November 30th, so probably around the end of February"
"Then it all makes sense" Giles exclaimed, wiping his glasses off and cleaning them excitedly.
"What makes sense?" Dawn asked, examining the exchange between Buffy and Giles with as much confusion as everyone else.
"Right around the end of February, Riley appeared looking for demon eggs, did he not? He was under the impression that someone was hiding them"
"Yeah, the Suvolte demon" Buffy supplied, mind still grappling for the connection between this and her pregnancy. At the same time, mentally blocking out her memories of that night, she remembered it well, but not for the reason Giles was talking about, that was the night Buffy broke it off with Spike for good, the night she broke his heart.
"And you said that Riley found the eggs in Spike's crypt"
"Yeah" Buffy answered
"And I assume, you and Spike were . . . intimate in the vicinity of these eggs" Giles answered, his British-ness overpowering the extreme awkwardness in his sentence.
"Yes" Buffy answered, blushing slightly.
"Then that's the answer" Giles said, looking extremely proud of himself, the rest of the Scooby gang, however, looked completely bewildered.
"No offense, G-man, but what the hell are you talking about?" Xander asked, voicing the thought running through the minds of all gathered.
"These eggs, these Suvolte eggs, they have some magical properties, nothing cataclysmic, but definitely worth taking notice over. One of these properties is increased fertility, even in vampires. Normally vampires are barren, unable to procreate at all, but these eggs provide a temporary awakening to the reproductive matter, making it possible, albeit for a short time for a vampire to reproduce." Giles triumphantly slammed his book shut, grinning widely, the rest of the group looked just as bewildered as before, unsure whether this new development was good news or bad news. In confusion, they turned to Buffy, as they had so many times before. Buffy pondered this revelation for a moment, smoothing out the innumerable thoughts in her head.
"So, these babies," she said finally, haltingly, "These babies are mine, really mine, not because of some weird prophecy or curse or something, they're mine, right?"
"Precisely" Giles answered, "The Suvolte eggs don't have any negative effects on the child after it is born, as far as I can see. It's more of an aid in conception, like In-vitro fertilization" The whole gang turned once more to Buffy, to see what her reaction would be. She stood up slowly, a sudden stab of pain in her back, and excused herself from the room, making her way into the basement. She noticed Spike sitting once more on the cot, white head bowed over a book. When he noticed her, he leapt to his feet, unsure of how to react to her appearance.
"Buffy, I . . ." He started, but Buffy cut him off with a wave of her hand.
"Do you want to be my babies' surrogate father?" she asked, momentarily striking the vampire speechless.
"I mean, I understand if you don't, but I just found out some news, some pretty amazing news and well, it just comes down to the fact that my girls are completely normal, well as normal as the daughters of a vampire slayer can be, but they aren't caused by some prophecy or something, so they're pretty normal in my book. And it's just that, the father is gone, I don't know if he's ever coming back, but since my babies are going to be normal, I want them to have as normal a life as they can, and that includes having a father." Spike once again found his voice
"But Buffy, I'm a vampire" he said
"And I'm a Slayer" she retorted, refusing to see his point.
"Why would you ask me? Xander is your friend; you've known him a lot longer than you've known me, I think, and he's completely normal, no demon inside of him at all"
"Because you're a good guy, Spike, I mean, Xander is too, but he was born that way, you fought for it, battled so hard." She sighed, searching for words. "Look, Spike, I don't know if I can ever love you the way you deserve to be loved, the way you loved me, but my girls can. They can love you as much as they can love me, and you deserve to have that, to know that kind of love once in your life." She stared down at her feet to hide the tears pooling in the corner of her eyes, no such luck. Spike caught sight of them and moved towards Buffy quickly, holding her face in his hand and wiping the tears away with his thumb. She leant into his chest then, surprising both of them, and Spike smoothed down her hair.
"Alright" he said finally, "I'll do it"
