CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Spike enters the bedroom, towel draped around his hips. His hair is still dripping wet from his shower and he's using a smaller towel to absorb some of the excess moisture before it can reach the carpet.
Buffy is lying on their bed, robed in pink terry cloth, her hand rubbing the exaggerated tortoise shell of her belly in small, circular motions.
"I thought you would be dressed by now," Spike says, opening the doors to their closet.
"Basically I'm delaying looking like a watermelon as long as I can," she says dismally, looking at the sea foam green concoction of taffeta and tulle draped on her vanity chair.
"Well, you are pink inside," he remarks, tongue between his teeth.
"Ha ha," she replies. She gets up slowly, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed as a geriatric would. When her feet reach the floor, she is gripped by a sudden, sharp pain that seems to go all through her. For a moment she is too agonized to move, pulling her chin down to her chest and fisting the bedspread. "Ooooh…" she groans, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Sweetheart, you all right?" When there is no immediate reply, Spike quickly scampers over to her. "Sweetheart? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she says through clenched teeth.
"Try again. What's wrong?"
She looks up at him almost bashfully once the pain subsides. "It was just a pain. That's all. Dr. Hemphill said that I could expect a few pains here and there before actual labor."
"Where was the pain?"
"Oh. Here. And there."
Spike shakes his head. For two weeks now he has watched her suffer with all matter of aches. She comes home after her shift at the Bronze, her ankles ringed in two twin inner tubes of fluid, her legs striped red and white like peppermint sticks. Her legs were cramping so badly the other night she almost cried in her sleep. Her back troubles her so much that he doesn't even ask her if she needs a massage anymore. He just strips her down as soon as she gets home and starts to work. But he's never heard her complain even once, though it hurts him to look at her enduring such suffering. She has told him to save his sympathy for the delivery when she will really need it.
Still, as he cups her chin in his hand, he feels the need to ask, "Sweetheart, you don't have to go through with this. I'm sure Anya would understand---
"Anya? Our Anya? Not big on the understanding. The other day she asked me if I could stop growing until after the wedding. Anyway, I promised her I would be her attendant so I gotta do it. Big baby gut and all."
"But last night at the rehearsal you had to sit down."
"So? I'll sit down again if I have to. Reverend Estey said he would have the altar boy's chair at the ready if I couldn't stand through the whole ceremony."
He can see that there's no point in arguing. The same resolve that takes hold of her features when she's engaged in battle is in place. She is going to do this. After all these years, he has developed a keen sense of when to back away and this is one of those times.
He bends and kisses her lightly on her lips, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. "I just hope Anya appreciates how amazing you are."
"She doesn't. But there are plenty of other people who do."
"Myself included," he smiles.
She grins back at him. Lately she has felt so unattractive in her hefty state that when she sees Spike looking at her with such love in his eyes, she is almost breathless. "Besides," she says, standing up into Spike's sturdy arms. "I'm looking forward to dancing with my honey at the reception."
"Yeah? Take your turn with me on the dance floor? As long as it's not the Macarena or that chicken dance, I'm game," he says in that plush velvet voice that makes her want to climb the walls.
He takes her in his arms, leading a mimicry of a dance, his pelvis gyrating against the swell of her abdomen. She pulls him as close to her as her belly will allow, breathing in the scent of the deodorant soap he used quite liberally while he was showering. His skin is still damp and warm to the touch. "Hmm…this reminds me of the time we danced. On the rooftop."
"And all those stars," he says with a laugh in his voice.
"That was so wonderful," she says, trailing a hand down his muscular back.
"Shall I dip you?" he asks devilishly.
"Honey, if you dipped me, I'm afraid I'd never get up again."
He kisses the side of her face. "I can't think of a million things much worse than being prone with you forever."
She rocks back and forth in his arms, looking into his blue eyes, wondering if he's seeing himself mirrored in her green-gold stare. She has heard that this is the only reflection vampires can see. It seems sometime he is seeing something beyond her, beyond anything she as ever viewed. But in this instance, he is seeing his lady love's features contorting in pain.
Her grip tightens around Spike's form, almost to the extent that if he were a breathing human being, he would be turning blue.
He holds her fast, asking, "That was a bad one, eh?"
"Yeah," she breathes. "But it's nothing I can't handle."
But he's thinking that she's being too brave as he continues to hold onto him, her fingernails digging into his skin until they draw blood. And he can smell the blood and he can feel it crawling down his flesh at an ant's pace.
"It's over now," she says valiantly, tossing back her growing locks. "I'm not going to worry about it."
Spike doesn't share his girlfriend's optimism. He is going to worry about it. She was dilated three centimeters at her last office visit. The doctor told her she could keep on with her life until the baby tells her otherwise. Right now the two of them are just waiting for the baby's next instructions. Spike is afraid that he is hearing them now.
Buffy breaks away from him, going over to her gown and picking it up as though it were a large, dead rodent in her kitchen windowsill. "You go and make yourself handsome. I'll do what I can with this."
Music from the church's organ commences from inside St. Catherine's Chapel as Spike, Dawn, and Buffy make their way across the darkened parking lot. It's not the wedding march, so they know they're not too late.
Inside the vestibule, the harried wedding director, sweaty in her light blue polyester shift dress which accentuates all the rolls of fat on her arms and stomach, immediately grabs Buffy and shuffles her across the floor to the gathering of bridesmaids standing at the base of the stairs. She places her in back of Willow, who seems to be having problems with her décolletage.
"I'm all boobs in this dress," Willow says, wiggling in her discomfort.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Tara says lustily.
"Oh please. You want to talk boobs? I feel like mine are about to come flying out any second," Buffy says.
"Ladies! Shhh!" the cranky wedding director scolds.
"Buffy! I gotta go pee!" Dawn says, shifting her weight from leg to leg.
"Why didn't you pee before we left the apartment?" Buffy asks in exasperation.
"You said we didn't have time, remember?"
"All right! Go pee then."
Pounding down the stairs to the basement, Dawn meets Anya on the landing, completely decked out in creamy white from head to toe. Her eyes fire lasers through her veil as the young girl flies past her.
"Wait, where are you going?"
"Potty," Dawn says.
Dawn can hear Anya whispering a number of expletives under her breath as she continues down the stairs to the darkened hallway below. She moves along the corridor, noting the strong scent of stale coffee and cheap lemon sandwich cookies. She passes door after door, peeking into the silent and clean Sunday school rooms, the cavernous fellowship hall, and then…
There is one door on her left now. She can hear something humming from inside. When she places her ear close to the door, it takes on an entirely different sound. That of moaning, like the church itself is close to death, breathing its last. She tries the doorknob, but it won't turn in her hand.
"You don't want to go in there, little one," a voice says behind her.
Her heart nearly leaps from her chest as she whips around at the sound of the voice. "Jeez! What the hell?"
In her view now is a diminutive woman, two heads shorter than herself, though she sports a pair of stacked white heels and a flowery pillbox hat to augment her stature.
"What are you looking for?" the woman asks in a helium influenced voice.
"The b-bathroom," Dawn stammers.
"Down the hall to your left, past the Sacristy."
Dawn nods her thanks and walks slowly down the hall. All the while the woman's eyes watch her. Once she's behind the closed door, she flips on the light, which flickers eerily until the lime green walls are revealed in a wash of fluorescent glow. She steadies herself by propping a shaky hand on the wall. Underneath her palm, the plaster is groaning. She jerks her hand away.
Buffy is looking at an oil painting of a monk, his hands clasped, his eyes trained towards the heavens. A thin rendering of a golden halo encircles his shorn head. She looks down at the brass plaque at the bottom of the frame. "Our Founder, Brother Francis" it reads. Underneath the heavy frame there is still another plaque that shines in brand newness. "Portrait Restoration Provided by the Generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Steven Singleton."
"Travis' parents," Buffy notes to herself. To the right of the portrait is a framed 8x10 parchment listing the names of parishioners who are on the sesquicentennial committee. At the top of the list are Mr. and Mrs. Steven Singleton, co-chairs.
Back in the safety of the gathering at the stairwell, Dawn goes to her sister immediately.
"What's wrong with you?" Buffy asks, observing Dawn's white marble pallor.
"Buffy, there's something wrong. Downstairs," Dawn gasps. "You and Spike need to check it out."
"What is it?" Buffy asks, laying a hand against Dawn's clammy cheek.
"I'm not sure. But it's really, really wrong."
"OK. We'll look into it after the ceremony. The wedding's about to start."
"Please," Dawn says. She takes her own place in line
At the same time, from behind the altar, where the candelabra and sheet music is kept in a small, airless room, Spike is hearing Xander's recitation of his self-written wedding vows and is reminded, painfully, of his chip-influenced migraine days.
"You and I…we are as meant for each other as a lathe and a two by four. We balance each other out. I can see the bubble floating right in the middle when I look at you---
"Oh God, you're not actually going to say that, are you?" Spike groans.
"Well, you heard me say it last night at the rehearsal."
"Yes, but I thought you were only kidding. Or at least by now you would have realized the error of your ways."
"Hey, someone once said that you should write what you know. And I know carpentry."
"That someone was Charles Dickens. And if Chucky Dick had foreseen that sods incapable of penning a decent dirty limerick would be writing their own wedding vows, he would have amended that statement."
Xander seems too consumed with the tightness of his collar to take offense at Spike's words. He fusses with the top button of his tuxedo shirt until his bow tie springs open. Helplessly, he looks at Spike. "Would you mind?"
Spike sighs and reminds himself that this must be one of the corollary duties Buffy often hinted at if Spike were to ever think of himself as being a Scooby; he has to occasionally feign interest in her friends. But he does care enough to make sure Xander doesn't look like a piano bar singer after last call for this day of days.
"I'm sweating through this thing," Xander says as Spike remakes his bow tie.
"And a lovely scent you're giving off," Spike scoffs.
"I guess Right Guard wasn't so much on guard for today," Xander says.
"Why are you so nervous anyway?" Spike wants to know. "This is what you want, right?"
"Well, I am taking a big step today that will pretty much change the course of my entire life. That's bound to make a guy a little edgy, don't you think?" Xander stiffens. "By the way, you still thinking about making it legal with Buffy?"
Spike is randomly brushing Xander's lapels when he hears this. Realizing that this might be far too intimate an action between sworn enemies, he stops. "It's still on my mind," Spike says, wandering off to the spare pew and taking a seat there, wresting a flask of bourbon from his coat pocket and gulping down a few sips.
"So what's holding you back?"
"I don't know," he says. "Just waiting for the right time, I suppose." The memory of the girl in the alleyway, her twin blood droplets racing each other down her tender throat, suddenly seizes his thoughts. The scent so near, the punishment of the denial of his being so painful and direct. "I had a slip up a few months ago."
"You did? And what happened?" Xander asks, pantomiming a need for Spike's flask.
Spike hands over the flask to him. "Nothing. Then. But I can't be certain that it won't happen again. And I don't feel comfortable asking Buffy to be my wife when she doesn't know who she's marrying."
Xander coughs from his uneasy swig of the flask and gives it back to Spike, the back of his hand drawn over his lips. "She'll be marrying the man she loves."
Spike thinks at first that Xander's coughing spasms have prevented an accurate interpretation of what Xander has said. But then he sees the smile. And the wink. And for once the outsider is embraced by someone on the inside, other than Buffy.
The organist begins Sheep May Safely Graze.
"Oh God," Xander says, eyes wide.
Something in him, rebelliously so, forces Spike to ask, "Are you ready?"
Xander makes two twin fists and replies, "I'm ready."
Spike is standing at the front of the church now, the ivory-robed minister joining him and Xander as they wait for the procession. There is Tara, looking impossibly gorgeous in her sea foam green gown. Willow follows her, a radiant witch of a girl, her crown of red hair looking as a rich and fascinating fire. And then behind her, someone so gorgeous for many minutes Spike has to tell himself, that's my girl.
Sure, he saw her when she was fully dressed in their bedroom, after he had to pull her panties up her legs because reaching down has become an impossibility to her. He saw her wrestle with the gown until her head popped out, flushed and glorious from the exertion. She smoothed the gown over her heavy girth and he looked at her then and thought she looked tired and frail. But now…
She looks utterly amazing in triumph.
She walks down the aisle, a stunning smile gifting all those who turn to see her as she passes. She holds her bouquet before her giant bosom and walks as though she has temporarily forgotten what is it is to feel the burden of her nine months' pregnancy on her slight figure. What's more, she looks at Spike and he feels as though he's looking at her for the first time and finds yet another reason to fall in love with this strong and beautiful young woman.
In the rehearsal, he was instructed to turn towards the bride and groom, but he cannot physically tear his gaze away from his lovely girl, bewitching him eight feet away in her amplified form, exposed bronze skin flowing over her bones like an endless stream of delicious caramel. He wants to lick her head to toe.
Reverend Estey begins, lifting his hands over the soon-to-be husband and wife. "Tonight we gather here to bear witness to the joining of this man and this woman in holy matrimony. The sanctity of marriage is not something to be taken lightly. I am certain that Anya and Alexander have searched their hearts many times up until this moment to make certain this is where they want to be. This is where they want to be for all eternity."
I want to be with you for all of eternity, Spike says to himself, still looking at Buffy. She stares back at him, her green eyed gaze making a B-line towards his heart. In her stare, it appears that her thoughts are mirroring his own.
"I have been privileged to talk with both Xander and Anya in the past few weeks. I know of the terrible struggles they have endured to get here. And yet, here they are, strong in their commitment to each other. God looks down this evening and smiles that two of his creatures have met and are going to be fruitful in their ways."
My little fertile crescent, Spike says to himself, still holding Buffy in his watch.
Just now, he sees Buffy's elated expression change into one of deep shock. She bends slightly, bracing her hand against the bottom of her belly, as though trying to keep the baby in until she can mouth to her lover, "My water broke!"
"What?" Spike asks, immediately making his way over to Buffy, just in time for her to slump into his arms.
She looks up at him, terrified. "My water broke," she says again.
From what he has read and from what Dr. Hemphill told him, after the water breaks, there's no way back. This is it.
All at once it's as though a flaming arrow has been fired against the altar. The congregation erupts in a shared shout of concern. The guests in the back rise from their seats, straining for a better look at the turn of events on the dais. The whole church is vibrating now with sharp whispers of speculation.
Giles, at the arm of the flustered and now clearly upstaged bride, addresses the crowd, "It's all right! It's all under control. Just stay calm." But then he sees his charge, so consumed in what seems an otherworldly pain. She is now down on the floor, her vampire lover's arms enveloping her.
"Buffy, sweetheart…we have to get you to hospital," Spike says.
"No!" she protests. "I promised."
"Is she having the baby here? This is supposed to be my day!" Anya frets, near tears, hands on hips.
"I'll be fine," Buffy says, assuring the collage of concerned faces around her.
"Buffy, you're in labor," Spike says.
"I'll make it," she says. "They just have to make it quick."
Spike lifts his gaze to the minister. "You heard the girl. Say your piece. And get it over with!"
At the vampire's urging, the minister sputters, "Do you, Alexander, take thee, Anya, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward---
A searing pain courses its way through Buffy's body and she convulses in Spike's arms.
"Yes, God, he does!" Spike answers for Xander. "If she hasn't sodding driven him off by now, they're going to be together forever. Proclaim them man and wife already!"
"Spike, this is bad," Buffy says. And Spike doesn't know if she means that he's handling things badly or if her pains are too intense. If she is talking about the pains they are coming far too quickly together and far too soon.
Spike looks apologetically at the minister and then at Xander as he sweeps Buffy into his arms. "Sorry. Emergency here. Girlfriend is having a baby. Our baby." As he walks off the dais, he tosses the velvet box which contains Anya's gold wedding band into Giles' hands. "Rupert, you can take care of the rest. I have got to get Buffy to hospital."
Spike carries his ladylove up the aisle, all the while telling people on either side, "She's having my baby. SHE'S having MY baby."
In the parking lot, Buffy nuzzles her head against Spike's shoulder, crying softly. "I didn't do what I said I was going to do," she sobs.
"Sweetheart, you can always get a note from home."
In the soft beige and rose hues of the labor room, the last best hope for humanity is lying in a thin, cotton gown against a raised hospital bed, a fetal heart monitor strapped against her belly. The attending nurse emerges from Buffy's thighs, a look of disbelief on her face.
"When did you feel your first pain?" the nurse asks.
"About seven thirty," Buffy says.
"And were there any more after that?"
"A few. But I thought they were those Braxton-Hicky pains. Why?"
"You're at ten centimeters," the nurse says.
"Ten! Ten? That can't be!" Buffy says.
"Well, I'm afraid it is. You're fully effaced and dilated."
"But what if…what if I have one of those Spinal Tap type cervixes that goes to eleven instead of ten?"
"Not possible," the nurse says, patting her thigh. "I'll go page Dr. Hemphill."
Spike has just barely laid his tuxedo jacket across the easy chair when he hears the news. Dawn was thinking about going home to change into jeans and a tee shirt and to retrieve the picture of their mother Buffy requested as her focal point.
All three are still in the aftermath of the announcement. The littlest Scooby is impatient for his debut. And as Spike and Dawn come to the understanding that a baby is going to be born and soon, Buffy begins to huff through a particularly violent contraction.
Spike remembers delivering kicks and punches to her in years before and never did he hear her make a sound even remotely close to the one he is hearing now. This is something from the depths of her being, a howl from centuries before she was born, the primal scream of her warrior soul.
She lies back against her pillows, breathless, balling the fitted sheet up in her hands. She grabs for the railing around her bed and then for Spike's hand, finally settling on the less breakable sheets. Again, another pain rips through her and she greets it with a rising, "Oh, oh, OH!"
Spike watches her face, twisted in agony, and he feels his own innards being turned inside out. He leans close to her, patting her hair down, whispering against her temple, "Don't worry, love. It will all be over soon." He casts an eye over at fretful, youthful Dawn who is so wound up with concern and anguish she is nearly immobile. "You all right, Bit?"
"Yeah," she says in a hollow voice as she peers down at her sister's moaning, restless form. "It's just hard…you know."
"I know, Bit. I know. But think of it like this. When it's all said and done, there's going to be a new addition to the family and you'll be one up on the totem pole," he says with a smile as he continues to stroke Buffy's hair.
She smiles back at him and reaches down to kiss her sister's perspiring forehead.
When Dr. Hemphill arrives, Buffy's contractions are a minute apart.
"So I hear we're all set to meet this little guy who's been messing with your figure and your appetite for nine months," Dr. Hemphill says cheerily.
"Unh," is Buffy's reply as she rails against the pain of another contraction.
"OK," Dr. Hemphill says, her gray eyes peering over her paper mask at Spike and Dawn. "Coaches, you know what to do, right?"
"Right," they reply in unison.
Dr. Hemphill hears the unsteadiness in their response and reminds them, "She needs to draw in a breath and count to ten. Then let it out. You can help with the counting. And with keeping her legs apart."
Given their instructions, Dawn and Spike position themselves on either side of Buffy, hands braced against her powerful thighs.
Her next contraction hits.
"One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…" Dawn and Spike count.
"Let it out," Dr. Hemphill says, her own breathing pulsing her paper mask against her nose.
Buffy exhales and pulls in another breath. Again Dawn and Spike count. One, two, three…
"Good pushing, Buffy!" Dr. Hemphill encourages. "Keep on, keep on."
Buffy draws on another breath, boring her chin deep into her chest as Dawn and Spike count. One, two, three…
"OK, Buffy. You're going to feel a slight burning sensation as the baby's head is crowning," Dr. Hemphill warns.
Again Buffy inhales and presses her hands against the bed. Spike and Dawn are mindful of her thighs, and now they are cognizant of what looks like a giant peach pit emerging from her depths.
"Oh my God! I see its head! I see the baby's head!" Dawn exclaims brightly.
"One more push!" Dr. Hemphill urges.
Buffy grunts, a congestion of blue veins mapping the manifestations of her torture on either side of her forehead.
"OK, you can stop pushing," Dr. Hemphill says.
Dr. Hemphill is twisting in her hands a grape-colored ball, the size of a wrestler's fist. But now, a shoulder shows itself. And then another. And now there is a child, covered from head to toe in the color and consistency of berried jam.
"And it's a boy!" Dr. Hemphill decries.
Wet, wrinkled, protesting daylight, the being has all the grace and gorgeousness of a weathered garden gnome. On Buffy's stomach now, against the still swollen domicile of the stomach the baby called home for nine months, he is all fingers and toes, all screaming madness. Wrinkled skin creases over disbelieving eyes as the child adjusts to his first minutes seeing something other than darkness. A nurse scrubs the baby down, revealing creamy white skin.
Spike looks down at the child, his child. The baby, through swollen lids, stares back at him with brilliant blue eyes. He smells the heady scent of blood and even more so the smell of Buffy recreated in this elfin form. In the aftermath of the birth, there is much noise and confusion all around, but for a moment, he thinks he can feel his cold, dead heart trying valiantly to stir within his chest. There is a creature in the world who has his blood and that creature is alive. And his. He reaches for the child just as he is being whisked away.
Buffy is returning to herself, propping herself up to view the goings on across the room as she finds herself draped in Spike and Dawn's arms. The baby's weight is announced. 7 pounds, 6 ounces. The baby's height is announced as well. 21 inches. The baby is absolutely fine and absolutely normal. When he is returned to his parents, he is clean and small, wrapped tight in a restrictive receiving blanket. But they can still see his face. For someone so anxious to be out and about in the world, the baby seems awfully nonchalant about being born.
In Buffy's arms for the first time, the baby seems so fragile she fears she will crush him with her Slayer strength. But when the baby is settled, she is overtaken by a wave of tenderness. The little face is too ready for fondness. The stretching limbs are too reminiscent of the parts that tested her womb's capacity.
Buffy smiles, stroking the baby's face. "Oh God, he's so beautiful…" she says, her voice quaking with emotion. "He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life." She lifts her tearful face to her lover and catches him by the hand. "Oh William, do you know what he is?"
"A miracle?" he asks, aching for a chance to hold his son.
"No," Buffy says. "He's the perfect little us."
She passes the infant into Spike's arms. As the baby conforms to his cradling arms, and as this new life force springs to whimpering fruition, tears course down his face in an immediate baptism over the baby's sweet head.
"He is that," Spike says, kissing his child and loving the warmth under his cold lips, "Hello, you. Hello, my beautiful boy. My sweet, beautiful child. My little Daniel." His body is shaking with sobs as he holds the baby as close as he can. "Oh Buffy, thank you."
"It was as much your doing as mine," she says diplomatically, using some of the Kleenex that Dawn is passing to her and using herself.
"Buffy, I've seen you do some amazing things with your body over the years, but this…what you did tonight…" He regards her with a sober stare, his eyes still pouring tears. "I love you, Buffy. I love you so much."
"And I love you, William."
He leans over to press a gentle kiss on Buffy's lips. He then takes a seat beside her on the bed, one arm going around her as the other still holds the child firm. Dawn too grabs a seat on the bed, on the other side of her sister, wrapping her arm tightly around her shoulders.
It is in this moment that the three of them come to realization that their little family is now complete.
At 11:30, Sunday morning, it is already an uncomfortable 93 degrees outside and not much cooler insider St. Catherine's Chapel. The area is ensnared by an unseasonable and fussy late season heat wave, which the congregation chooses to fight with fluttering church bulletins and open windows. The congregation has listened to the church choir sing, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and they have listened to themselves sing "Rock of Ages" and they have tithed and "glory be'ed" and now they are silent as Reverend Estey mounts the pulpit and bows his head as though bearing a crown of lead weights.
He finally lifts his head, a drip of perspiration blurring the notes in front of him. But he is confident he can fill in the blank spaces his sweat has created.
He grips the edges of the wooden podium as he begins to speak.
"My friends, we all know that Satan, since his conception, has been trying to find ways to walk among us. And 150 years ago, a cluster of a dozen believing souls put their faith in one of his minions and damned their descendents to hell on this very spot."
Today as the congregation was walking into the church, they knew this was coming. The message on the board outside the church read, "Opening Old Wounds," a sure sign that their yearly reminder of the church's founding would be retold from the pulpit. This is a story that they all know better than the story of Adam and Eve and it is verses more relevant. This bit of unorthodox scripture tells the story of their ultimate demise, and their ultimate salvation.
"It was here that settlers used to gather in a sod and wood shack and pray for the day that they would have a real church, a handsomely built church that would accurately reflect their love for God in its architecture. And as they were praying, a man, shorn of head and brown of robes, entered their midst. He called himself Brother Francis. And he told them that he would build the church they dreamed of. If only they believed in him.
"They had no course but to believe in him. Building materials were sparse and the congregation was poor. He told them that he would build a grand church from the wood of the forests around them, carve the wood into splendid seraphs of wonder, like fine words. And for forty days and forty nights he worked, without assistance, building the church we stand in today. And when the congregation saw the work, they gasped, some so overcome they lost their senses and collapsed under the influence of the beauty shone around about them. This was the most magnificent structure they had ever seen. Some swore that Joseph had been the architect and as they prayed to the Blessed Virgin, Brother Francis stood before them. He ripped off his robes to reveal a throbbing mass of red, veined skin. His feet were cloven. His ears, pointed. His tail was aimed towards the heavens, but it was clear his mission came from down below."
No matter how many times they have heard this, the congregation suffers a collective shudder.
"He proclaimed for the congregation that their souls had been taken, wrested by Satan's hand. The church they were admiring was the work of Satan. But as the Devil was about to take all the Believers down into Hell, the hand of God swept down and collected the Demon into his palm and put him back into the fiery depths of Hell."
The minister briefly turns ghostly pale as he peers out at the congregation. They are all so hopeful, their lives, their souls, hinging on his every word.
"The night of Brother Francis' transformation, a vision of St. Catherine appeared to each and every one of the members of the church. She told them that they would be saved. That Satan would not prevail and he would be defeated. However, he would try to make another appearance. But his efforts would be thwarted by the sacrifice of a young woman. 'The Slayer and a demon shall combine and raise for you a savior.'
"Today we give thanks to Buffy Summers and her child, born at 9:47 last night. We give thanks to her lately realized sacrifice. We give thanks to her child. We give thanks that Our's is a forgiving God and today we praise Him. The Word of the Lord…"
"Thanks be to God," the congregation responds.
At this time, the child is visited by the Scoobies. Xander insists that the child be called Scrappy Doo and both mother and father are quick to insist that he not be. Giles, Buffy knows, is searching for a tail or protuberances about the ears and finding no such deformities, he pronounces the child perfect. No one can deny the child's parentage when viewing the skiff of blond hair across the veined scalp or the blue eyes revealed between puckered eyelids. This is Spike's child.
This is the son of the Slayer and her vampire lover.