Chapter Four: Whose Bundle of Joy?
The brown paper bag was fluttering and rattling with new life as, once again, oxygen was being desperately sought from it.
"Breathe Buffy, breathe," Willow soothed helplessly. Buffy grasped onto the paper bag for dear life, frenziedly gasping for air and causing the bag to groan in an in-and-out crunching sound. It was one of the very few audible noises floating around the stunned room at the moment.
Spike neared his ladylove and leaned down worriedly. "Pet, what's wrong?" he demanded. "What's happened?"
Buffy gazed up blearily at Spike. Still breathing hard, she shook her head in a daze and fought to form comprehensible words. Instead she uttered a wild half-shriek, half grunt and darkly turned back to the paper bag. Confounded, Spike turned to the rest of the Scoobies for explanation, but found most of them unresponsive. Willow was shaking her head nonsensically whilst comforting Buffy, Xander paced the floor with hyper fervency, Anya carelessly returned her attentions back to her nails and Dawn just stared at Spike with an unsettling fascinated expression on her face. Among all of them, Giles seemed only vaguely deadened with disbelief, so Spike turned to him.
"'Ere, Jeeves." Spike strode up him and jabbed Giles back to life. "Maybe you can tell me what's going on here."
Giles blinked out of a self-imposed trance and turned back to Spike almost alarmed. "What? Oh . . . o-oh, umm, yes . . . uh, it appears that um . . . something's . . . happened."
Spike snorted impatiently. "You don't say? Geez Rupes, couldn't figure it for myself, glad to know you could clear that up for me with all your watcherly insight. Come on now, what the bloody hell has gone on with you lot?"
"Well . . . uh, it s-seems that Willow, umm, is with . . . child."
Spike cocked his head at Willow with an expression of neutral and congratulatory surprise. "Is that all? Red's got a bun in the oven, has she? That's certainly . . . unexpected."
"And it appears that you're the father, Spike," added Giles softly.
Neutralism was replaced by self-righteous indignation immediately as Spike's mouth dropped in protest. "I bloody well am not!"
"You are!" Dawn nearly shrieked, bouncing up and down with radioactive energy. "The crystal said so, you're the father!"
Spike hardened and studied everyone with suspicion. "Crystal? Father? Look, if this is your idea of a joke . . . or a drug binge----"
"We're serious, Spike. We've performed a spell to locate the father of Willow's child and . . ." Giles took an intake of air, still trying to recover from the revelation. "We evidently found him."
Spike turned his head around to double-check and see if there was anyone else Giles could possibly have been indicating. "This is insane," he announced loudly. "You all have lost your bloody marbles. I'm no one's daddy. Look Red, I understand you might be in some kind of trouble, but trying to corner me into providing child support is a low trick-----"
"Me?!" Willow sat up, incensed. "I'm not trying to trick anybody! You were the one who did this to me, Mister!"
"What are you yammering on about? I haven't done anything to you! Why would I? I'm not one of those dumbly males who has to assert their manhood by making it with a dy----"
"Quiet you!" Xander stalked up Spike, fuming. "Don't talk about her like that and don't try to deny this." He jutted his face next to Spike and glared at him menacingly. "Finally . . . a justifiable reason to kick your ass."
Spike pushed Xander away roughly and implored the rest to listen to reason. "Aren't you all forgetting one bit? Vampire here, undead, far removed from life, far removed from giving it. I'm strong and virile for my age, but sadly, I can't say the same for my boys." He indicated what he meant by nodding his head downward.
Everyone in the room blinked twice as if they were hearing this for the first time. "Hey," Anya remarked, sitting up in her chair. "He's right."
"Damn straight I'm right. I couldn't knock Red up if I tried." He glanced over quickly at Buffy and added in a diffident tone, "Not like I'd want to, either."
"So what does this mean?" Buffy demanded, regaining the ability to articulate. "What about the crystal?"
Giles stroked his chin thoughtfully. "It indeed makes little sense," he muttered quietly.
"Hey and another thing," Anya added tersely. "Willow said she got pregnant three months ago when she went all varicose-veiny with the . . . yeah, anyway . . . Spike wasn't even here then. He was in Africa."
"That's right!" affirmed Spike loudly. "I was frolicking with wildebeests, wrastling with lions, endowing myself with a soul." He sat down and wrapped his arms around his obviously agitated girlfriend in an outward gesture of loving devotion. "All for the sake of you, ducks."
Buffy made a face and was too riled up to fall for his rueful tricks. "Stop it, Spike," she hissed in her I'm-the-Slayer-and-You're-Still-Stake-Fodder-So-Don't-Push-Me kind of voice, avoiding his arms and scooting over near Willow.
Spike pursed his lips impatiently, but immediately knew she meant business, so he scooted away dutifully. "Stopping now." Scourge of Europe, infamous deviant feared by millions, successfully submissive at three words utterance. What had he been reduced to?
"Okay, we've established the utter ridiculousness of the situation," Willow piped up. "Now let's go on to the explain-y thing."
Once again, eyes turned to Giles plaintively, and feeling under the pressure, he widened his eyes and held his arms out. "What?" he cried innocently.
"Well . . ." Anya cocked an eyebrow. "Isn't that your cue? This is the part where you suggest research and consequently impose a thoroughly boring evening on the rest of us."
Giles rubbed his head, fatigue weighing heavily upon him. "Oh. Yes, that's right. I forgot." Chuckling softly, his spirits were visibly raised at the prospect of a rigid perusing of text. "Haven't been in the game for awhile, my timing when it comes to my watcher duties has waned quite a bit----" He looked up and was rewarded with stoic, impatient glances, so he cleared his throat and pawed at his jacket for his glasses. "Right well, let's get started then," he commanded forcefully, and a universal groan followed.
Four hours later, they were in the same place they had started. They knew Willow's child was Spike's, they knew Spike was a vampire, and they knew Spike had been in another continent while the child had been conceived. All in all, they were inexorably and undeniably clueless.
"This sucks!" Anya sighed, collapsing onto the dining room table, stacked high with various texts. "I'm not finding out anything and failure gives me frown lines."
"Keep looking Anya, you've barely touched those texts over there," Giles replied quietly, not taking his eyes off of the book he was studying.
Anya made a face and pushed the hated books away. "Is it just me, or is there no method to this madness at all? You're just looking up stuff randomly, trying to find the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack."
Giles grit his teeth. "We have to start somewhere Anya, explanations don't arrive out of thin air."
"Then what air? I'm feeling no air. Fat, thin, bulimic, I don't think there's any air in the world that an explanation will come out of."
Xander heaved a sigh as well, gently putting down the book he was studying. "She's right, Giles, it's been forever, and we don't even have a hint as to what's going on with Willow."
Giles frowned impatiently. "Oh come on now! We used to pull all-nighters, us lot. We could research for hours upon hours back in the day! Don't tell me you're growing weary in your old age?"
Spike blinked and shook his head as he gazed at most of the assembled group. "You must have been the dullest and deadest bunch o' high schoolers ever known to man."
"Excuse me, but we're not the vivacious Marathon Man you are, Giles." Xander nodded over towards Dawn, whose brown hair splayed across many of the books in front of her as she napped soundly.
"Oh look!" Willow giggled softly, peering down at the dozing Dawn. "She's got little page lines across her face!"
"I'll take the littl' Bit upstairs to bed," Spike sprang up in his chair, happy for an excuse to relieve himself of the sodding research. "I guess she just can handle the fast-paced world of researching like you speed demons." Picking her up, he carried her softly up the stairs, while Buffy gazed at him affectionately. He was so gentle and good with Dawn, and similarly gentlemanly-like with her as well . . . except for when the circumstance called for something different of course. She adored her lover with all of her soul, how was she to believe that he was the father of another woman's child?
Turning her head back to the books abruptly, she proclaimed, "I want to find an explanation for this now."
"All in good time Buffy, I'm sure if we have enough persistence, we can come up with something soon---"
"Ooo! Ooo! I know!" Anya rose up from her chair excitedly, waving her hands. "I have an idea what caused this!" While everyone else looked on with raised eyebrows and expectation, she held out her hands and grinned proudly. "Magic!" she cried.
Giles slumped his shoulders and returned to his text. "Now out of the nothingness we know, Anya, that was one of the few things we were aware of."
"I'm serious! It's something magical . . . magicky. Maybe Willow placed a spell of herself----"
"Hey! Did not! Recovering wiccan here? Been to rehab and back? I'm not dumb enough to put a spell on myself!"
"Of course not now . . . then. When you were all up on the majicks."
"Why would I take time out of my busy schedule of skinning murderers and attempting apocalypse to think a baby belonged up in the mix?" She said it plainly, without any sign of bitterness, but the words still caused her, Buffy, Giles and Xander to wince.
"I don't know. Who knows what could have happened? You were absorbing tons of magic, Willow. More magic than any mortal had ever consumed before. Maybe you . . . you tapped into something, something that caused this."
Giles' eyes widened. "Of course! Willow had facilities to more magic than any person, even immortal, has ever encountered. I'm sure that fits in somehow."
"The question is, how?" countered Buffy, sighing. She eyed the crystal at the other end of the table with disdain. Glaring at it, she went over to pick it up and cup it in her hand for further scrutiny. Maybe it was a faulty crystal, maybe the sun just happened to have caught its light and made it glow like that, maybe Giles' hands were shaking when he----
"Hey!" she suddenly exclaimed. "It's glowing!" Looking down, the crystal was indeed quaking and glowing in her hands, almost with the same strength it had when it was directed at Spike.
Giles neared her in a rush and stared down as Buffy grasped the crystal. "That's amazing," he breathed. "Do you realize what this means?"
"That this little puppy is defunct? It just goes all glow-y whenever anyone holds it, it doesn't matter who it is----"
"It means that you're part of the child's genetical make-up!"
"Huh?" Willow and Buffy chimed in unison.
"Well the crystal indicated that Spike was biologically linked to the child, didn't it? Now it's indicating that you are as well!"
Xander shook his head dazedly. "Color me any more confused and . . . well I'd still be really confused."
"Giles that's . . ." Buffy scoffed, gazing towards Willow and then back at Giles. "That's really gross," she murmured in low tones.
"Not to mention anatomically impossible," Willow nodded.
"Please. It's evident that this child was not conceived in a conventional manner, why are you all assuming it has conventional parents?"
"I have unconventional parents," Xander said, pointing towards himself. "Parents who exist on a liquid, fermented diet and think a brawl-fest constitutes as a 25-th anniversary dinner. That---" Now he was pointing back at Willow, "is not a set of unconventional parents. That is a mathematically-challenged nightmare."
"Are you saying that I'm a parent of Willow's child too?" Buffy asked incredulously.
"I'm not saying anything! I'm just . . . pondering." Giles was gazing back down at his book and suddenly brightened when he came across a few lines. " Aha! Now, I'm saying something." Getting up hastily, he put the desk on the table. "Locus de Ater et Albus," he read aloud to the group, as if that was supposed to fill them with instant recognition.
"Ummm . . . remember the part where I went with the big 'huh'?" asked Buffy.
"It means 'The Land of Black and White'," Giles explained. "An alternate dimension."
"And this is big news . . . why?"
"I see now," Giles was murmuring to himself hazily, a gleam shining in his eye. "I-I think I understand what happened!"
"Giles!" Buffy glared at him meaningfully. "Explain-y thing?"
"Y-yes well . . . alright, do you all remember when I returned and supplied Willow with that special magic given to me by the coven in England?"
"Sure . . ."
"Well what that magic was . . . it was the very essence of magic in general, it contained everything of magic that was good and righteous and full of humanity. It contained the powers of everything magic is intended to work for. A sort of . . . 'white magic' you may call it."
"I remember you telling me that in the Magic Box," remarked Anya. "You purposely made Willow take that magic from you so she could---"
"Regain her humanity, exactly. However, what I hadn't counted on was the amount of black magic Willow had already absorbed. I had no idea it was so much. My actions, in effect, were futile, for I thought Willow had blocked out the humanity in the magic I had given here. But that's not to say it wasn't there.
Normally when someone is given that much white magic, it takes over him or her completely and nothing else is prevalent in them. However, when Willow received it, she didn't succumb to it in such a manner. Instead, she contained both types of magic----black and white. They were, at that point, interchangeable, mingling together, in a way, almost powerless without each other. They had become one and mixed together so much that they became indistinguishable. She was a vessel for both black and white, dark and light. And she tapped into any sort of energy that contained the similar elements."
"So what does that have to do with me?" Buffy asked, a little nervous now.
"Your relationship with Spike contained exactly that sort of energy, Buffy. A um . . . physical bond," he said the word in a rushed, almost choking kind of way, "between a slayer and a vampire was unprecedented."
"Our Buffy, the girl who laughs in the face of precedent and stomps all over it . . . not once, but twice," Xander nodded with facetious pride.
"So you're saying----"
"You and Spike are the white and black, Buffy. You're union with Spike was something almost cosmically and mystically extraordinary. In that way, you created the essence of a child that existed not in this dimension---"
"But in the Land of Black and White," Buffy finished for him softly, suddenly understanding.
"Yes. Of course in this dimension, it seems impossible and unparalleled for a vampire to give life, but for that matter, the union between slayer and vampire is unparalleled as well."
Buffy put her hand to her head. "I told Spike we didn't knew what we were getting into."
"So . . . this means . . . okay. Spike and Buffy do their stuff, create a child that's existing and walking around some other dimension and . . . it gets thrown into my lap?"
"Willow, you tapped into this dimension when you possessed the majicks. A part of you was existing at that time in that dimension. And when you were, you were the vessel that picked up the energy of this child and---"
"Now it's my bundle of joy," Willow grimly replied. "Well that's not fair. Buffy and Spike get to do the fun parts and I'm stuck with the kid."
Buffy was already up and squealing. "Oh my god Willow, this is amazing!" she cried, grasping her best friend's hands. "It is my baby! You're having my baby!"
"That's something you don't hear everyday," Anya remarked.
"That's right," Willow sighed, wrinkling her lower lip into a frown as she tried to overcome the bizarre nature of this circumstance. "I'm the blessed surrogate mother."
"This is so great!" Buffy now had her arms fully around Willow and was grappling her into a hug. After groans of pain and protest, Buffy hurriedly backed away.
"What the hell is going on here?" Spike thundered as he blumbered down the stairs and into the dining room. "What's all the girlish screams about?"
"Willow's having our baby!" Buffy screamed, jumping up and down maniacally like a cheerleader on crack. "Yours and mine! A-and Willow's, I guess. Ours!" Spike took one look at her and shook his head, heading to the kitchen for a blood pack and a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves.
"This place gets loonier everyday," he muttered as he walked away. "A century with Drusilla pales in comparison."
AN: Sorry for the mini hold-up, school is not conducive to literary inspiration at all. Also, I know I included some Latin in here, I translated it myself, and I don't take Latin so . . . if I have a mob of appalled Latin students on my case, I apologize, the truth is I don't know a lick of Latin to save my life.
