Part Four Past Revisited or A Mother's View

She ran. She ran and ran until it felt like her legs would give out and then she ran some more. There were to many to fight and with the precious bundle in her arms she couldn't afford to take any risks that could cost them their lives. No matter where they went, the demons were always there. Not just the run of the mill demons who didn't know who she was or care for that matter, but the ones that were searching trying to kill him.

Her baby boy. Buffy had a hundred names for him, her angel, her miracle, her gift, her darling, but the most significant and the one that still shocked even her was her son. He was only three weeks old and even with Buffy's advanced healing, she still wasn't up to full par.

Risking a glance behind her she saw that their pursuers were gaining. Despite her willingness to run to the end of the earth to keep her baby safe she just didn't have the stamina or speed right now. She had to find a place to make a stand. Without slowing she took in her surroundings. She noticed a small opening in a hill just ahead. She'd have to put on some speed if she hoped to make in up the steep incline with her baby and still stay ahead. She as much speed as she could muster she broke out into a sprint up the hill.

When she hit the base she started to climb. It was steeper than she had anticipated or maybe it was the fact she only had one arm to pull her up, it didn't matter which. With some difficulty she made it up the hill and into the cave. She quickly glanced around and located a rather large rock to hide her baby under. She quickly but carefully placed the little boy under the rock then turned to the entrance.

The ensuing fight was fast and furious. As tired as she was all she had to do was think about her child and what these things would do to him and it was like a breath a fresh air. In all it took about ten minutes for her to put them down and in the end she stood over several demon bodies.

She stood there for a good couple of seconds waiting for more demons to burst through the entrance and try and kill her. More importantly, kill her son. But they didn't come and her son started to coo. At that moment three weeks of stress and months of torment started to crash down on Buffy in waves. She looked around the cave a remembered when things were simple.

Buffy held back her long over due tear fest and went to check on her baby. She gave him a once over when she picked him up and he seemed fine. She went to the front cave entrance and looked in the direction she came from. What she saw was not surprising to her but never the less upsetting.

She defeated the troops of demons sent by Mac, but now she had to contend with the knights. At first she had tried to reason with them and explain that her baby wasn't evil but they twisted every thing she said and continued to come. She knew they didn't have a way of tracking her scent the way the demons did, but just to be safe she set her son down and looked around the cave for a boulder or something to block the cave entrance. She decided on the one she hid her son under and rolled it into place. She used a simple magic charm she taught herself sealed the entrance.

That finished she decided it was time to rest. The knights would continue on and after they had passed she could heard east and avoid both armies of good and evil.

Venturing back further into the cave she found an area where she could make a resting place for her baby and her. She took off the backpack and pulled out a thick blanket. She folded it and set it on the ground for the future bed of her baby. She unbuttoned her shirt then unwrapped him from his blanket and started to feed him. He latched hungrily onto her nipple as though he hadn't eaten it weeks. Buffy was thankful that wasn't the case.

As her son nursed she mused about the events that had brought her here. She looked down at her baby with tears in her eyes, "I sorry I can't be a better mom little one," she whispered.

Sensing her distress although not knowing the cause of it the boy began to cry. "Shhhh, little one, please don't cry." Buffy felt like a bad mom in that moment because like many other times she was at a loss as to what to do. Her boy never cried but when he did it always took Buffy a while to calm him. Maybe that was normal, maybe it wasn't, she didn't know.

Searching her mind as to what to do, she remembered a song and old woman had taught her from the last town she passed through. She repositioned her boy to a more comfortable position but kept him level so he could still nurse she began to sing one of the few songs that had become known to her as their songs.

//Slumber my darling, thy mother is near

Guarding thy dreams from all terror and fear.

Sunlight has past and the twilight has gone,

Slumber my darling, the night's coming on.

Sweet visions attend thy sleep

Fondest, dearest to me,

While others their revels keep,

I will watch over thee.

Slumber my darling, the birds are at rest,

Wandering dews by the flowers are caressed,

Slumber my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,

Pray that the angels will shield thee from harm.

Slumber my darling till morn's blushing ray

Brings to the world the glad tidings of day.

Fill the dark void with thy dreamy delight-

Slumber, thy mother will guard thee tonight.

Thy pillow shall sacred be

From all outward alarms,

Thou, thou art the world to me

In thine innocent charms.

Slumber my darling, the birds are at rest,

Wandering dews by the flowers are caressed,

Slumber my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,

Pray that the angels will shield thee from harm.//

By the end of the song Buffy was in tears while her son was slept quietly in her arms. Buffy gently set the baby down in the make shift bed she made earlier and as quietly as she could scrambled further into the cave.

She stumbled into an adjacent chamber and collapsed on the ground sobbing for the first time since her son was born. After several minutes she began to think about the events in her life that go her here. She thought of the night of her birthday with Angel.

She cried harder at the unfairness of it all. It wasn't right. Angel and Buffy never knew the consequences of their actions. Any of them. She thought back to when she realized she was pregnant.

Most of the symptoms were passed off as something else. She never really put all the pieces together until she got sick and ended up in the hospital. Buffy never got sick. The fact that she did should have told her something was off.

The second thing was boy, Ryan. It was the weirdest thing when she met him. She wanted to pumble the demon who was trying to hurt him, at the time she past it off as just a need to protect him, a normal human thing. Now she recognized the feeling of the necessity to protect him as what she felt for her son. A maternal instinct.

Her third clue was her hormones. Wow, looking back she was a nut case those last months in Sunnydale. Of course with everything going on it was dismissed as sensory overload.

The forth sign was the one all girls recognize as the first sign, no period. She really hadn't thought about it because it wasn't unusual for her to go without for months at a time. She was the slayer and therefore very physically active.

It was only when she started to show she started to suspect. A person could really only tell when she had her close off. She started wearing dark clothes and layering them.

However, even then she told herself that she was putting on some extra pounds and didn't think about it. The night she attacked Angel was when she found out. That very night she went to a drug store and bought a home pregnancy kit.

It was just after she had been kicked out and she needed to know. No, know wasn't the right word. She already knew; she had to confirm it. Nothing on the planet could push her to kill Angel. Had the test been negative the world would be in hell. But it wasn't negative, it was positive and it was the final push she needed. The only person she could put above Angel was their child. Her friends, her family, the world, and even herself where all people she knew Angel would want her to protect them all but knew he would understand why she couldn't. But if she had let Angelus kill their child when she had the power to protect it, Angel would never forgive her that.

So she fought and won. Then she left. She couldn't stay for so many reasons. Too many to go through. She traveled to L.A. and wasn't there for a month when all hell broke loose.

She was taken into the house of a woman she met in a store. The woman saw her pregnant, now clearly showing, and took pity and offered Buffy the attic room for her and her baby. She only got suspicious after a fight with the woman.

Buffy had gone out for a walk after a particularly bad dream when some vampires had attacked her. Nothing special. However unwilling to fight in her condition she ran back towards the house. When she got back however the woman was waiting for her and looked clearly furious.

The woman, Joy was her name, accused her of not taking care of herself. She ranted about all the things that could have happened. In the course of her rants she made two mistakes that tipped Buffy off.

First was when she said had gotten attacked by something worse. This perked Buffy's ears because from the moment she returned she hadn't had a chance to say anything, much less that she was attacked.

She was about to say something when Joy said something that chilled her to the center of her bones.

"And what if something had happened to your baby, we can't let something happen to such a special child."

I wasn't any one thing that scared her it was the collection of all these things that made Buffy worry.

Joy was always going on about what a special child Buffy was carrying. Buffy thought it was sweet but never really pondered it. But her former statement added to all the other things made everything fall into place.

Buffy's maternal instincts kicked in as Joy turned to walk out of the room. Buffy grabbed a vase and smashed it over Joy's head. She hit the ground unconscious. Just as Buffy went to make for the door Joy grabbed her leg. When Buffy turned and looked down Joy's face was hanging off her skin and beneath was a demon.

Buffy kicked Joy and ran to the kitchen for a knife. As Joy ran after her she ran smack into the knife. Buffy then beheaded her just to be safe. She was never more chilled; she'd lived in this house for a month and all this time Joy was looking to take her baby.

Buffy started looking around for information about whom and/or what Joy really was. Buffy started to realize at that moment that she was acting differently. It was like slayer instincts and mommy instincts were mixing together and taking over. Under normal circumstances she would have grabbed her stuff and left. This was making her more. more.level headed if you will.

This of course was in sharp contrast to what her hormones were doing to her but that is another story. It took her nearly four hours but she found a box with ancient scrolls and bits of paper written in about a dozen different languages.

Buffy gathered together all this stuff. Packed a bag with diapers, clothes, and blankets and left. For a week she wondered. She still didn't know who was after her but her gut was telling her that Joy wasn't alone.

At the end of the week she was attacked by, of all things, a group of medieval knights. Weirder still is she was then saved by another group of medieval knights. They, unlike her, knew all of the languages the various scrolls were written in. The translated them and gave her the first insight into what was inside her.

It was called the destroyer, a child that would either unite the forces of good against the evil or unite the forces of evil against the good. The side he was on would be the victor. He was the first of several children to be born with amazing power and unusual, and some times down right impossible like Buffy's case, parentage.

The knights that attacked her were called the Knights of Puzantian, devoted to the protection of the earth. They explained that her child was a risk both sides were either unwilling to risk or not risk. In essence, due to the birth of her baby, there were now four sides instead of two.

Like every force of good or evil in the world the Puzantian Knights were divided down the middle as to the course of action to take. They told her that they could no longer stay in L.A. and were going to take her to a different dimension for her own safety.

Reason being that in a different dimension no one would recognize her and therefore after they lost their trailers they could send Buffy back to Sunnydale and no one would know that the slayer's baby was the destroyer everyone was looking for.

It was a great plan.

Right up until they were attacked mid way through the spell and Buffy got hurtled into a split dimension; split dimension, meaning that it was really two dimensions with millions of 'doors' into each other. This would have been fine. The first, nicer dimension was known as Krim. The second was the worse dimension known to man. It was called Quortoth.