DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya, Drew, Geyton, Noelle, Claire, Val, Brandon, Brookie, and anyone else you don't recognize. Joss owns everyone related to BtVS and AtS.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm trying to do the best I can with updates. It's hard, but if you guys keep reading and let me know what you think, I'll keep writing.
You'll get to see some of the kids' parents in this chapter, though very few of the kids are related to anyone major in the Buffyverse. I don't like writing fics that pretend that five years from now, all of the Buffyverse people will have kids, so you'll see a lot of incredible coincidences involving more minor characters, but you won't see the Scoobies running around with kids. Likewise, none of the main players in AI will have kids either. No little Angels, no Gunn kids, no Wes kids, etc. Still, there will be a few coincidences that might make you all raise your eyebrows a bit… I like to see it as the influence of the Powers that Be on the lives of their champions…
And to the person who asked me a question regarding Val, email me.
Anyway, hope you enjoy.
SMALL PACKAGES: CHAPTER FOUR
"Second coma?" Buffy asked, shooting Faith an incredulous look.
Faith slumped into her chair a little, meeting Buffy's gaze directly. "You know, B," she said. "It's a long story."
Buffy stared at her for a second.
"I was in another coma," Faith said simply, shrugging.
"Shockingly not long story," Buffy said.
"So it would appear," Faith replied, a lazy, wry tone in her voice. She sighed after a moment. "After Sunnydale, I was with Robin for a while." Faith averted her eyes a bit. "Guess I don't need to say that I screwed that one up." She paused for a moment. "That's what I do, right?" Her voice was casual and laced with acceptance rather than bitterness.
Buffy opened her mouth, wanting to say something, and a small sound came out. "Faith," she said.
Faith cut her off with a small shake of her head, and the dark slayer continued her story. "I just bounced around for a while, slaying vamps. Killing things, but it wasn't the same, B. More and more of them were coming."
Buffy knew that she wasn't talking about vamps.
"Slayers?" she asked. She'd experienced the same thing: going out to slay, and finding a slayer already there. The ability was an incredible part of who she was, but the need of the world wasn't the same anymore. It was exactly what Buffy had wanted, exactly what Faith had feared.
"Then one night, I'm staking out a club," Faith said, and Buffy quelled the insane urge to giggle at the lame pun she read into Faith's words.
"I'd already dusted a couple of vamps, and I went inside to grab a drink." Faith ran out of words then, thinking about the way she'd felt then, moving further and further away from reality, into darkness toward the light.
"Uh… Faith?" Buffy's words brought Faith back to this world. "Earth to Faith." Faith turned to look at her. "Major zone out-age," Buffy told her.
Faith nodded. She swallowed and then spoke. "I woke up eight months later," Faith said. "Eight months pregnant."
"No. More. Wrestling." Willow's voice was firm, but all of the kids could hear the smile in her voice.
Drew, ignoring the hold Geyton had on his right foot and the way Kaya was sitting on top of his body, grinned charmingly up at Willow. Holding his index finger close to his thumb, leaving a tiny space in between, he asked, "A little wrestling?"
Willow held her fingers a little bit apart, mimicking his action and grinned goofily for a moment. Seeing that Val was losing her hold over Brookie, she shook her head firmly and put on her resolve face. "No wrestling," she said. The idea of Brookie wrestling was very scary.
Brookie danced toward the group. "Spar, spar, spar!" she sang loudly. "Brookie spar. Brookie spar with pointy things."
Instantly, everyone's attention was on Brookie.
Willow breathed a sigh of relief to see that there were no pointy things in Brookie's hands.
Brandon rolled his eyes and looked at the clock on the wall. "It's almost time to go home," he announced importantly. He was the only one of the children, besides Val, who seldom spoke, who could read clocks.
Xander squinted at the clock and tilted his head slightly to the side. "We seriously need one of the clocks with numbers," Xander said.
"A digital clock?" Willow asked. "Good old Mr. Clock-with-minute-and-hour-hands is just fine with me."
Xander held his index finger a little bit above his thumb. "Just a little?" he asked, echoing Drew's words from earlier.
Willow broke into a smile, and in one very practiced movement, she pulled Geyton and Drew apart and swept Kaya easily into her arms.
"How about a singalong before we go," Xander suggested, shooting a wicked look at Willow. Willow glared at him good naturedly.
"Is Miss Willow gonna sing, Uncle Xander?" Noelle asked, wide eyed.
Xander grinned at Willow. He held his index finger about a centimeter from his thumn. "Just a little," he told the kids.
The kids turned their attention to Willow. Miss Willow never sang during singalongs. Willow's skin had turned pale at the very thought of singing for an audience, even an audience as young and forgiving as the kids of Potential Preschool.
"I'll sing," Claire volunteered. Xander shuddered. Singing was not one of Claire's talents.
"I know a good song," Noelle said, cutting Claire off.
Her formerly pristine dress completely in shreds, Noelle started singing. "Mary had a little glaive, little glaive, little glaive…"
Claire picked up the song right away. "MARY HAD A LITTLE GLAIVE WHOSE FLEECE WAS WHITE AS SNOW!"
Brandon rolled his eyes. "Glaives aren't white," he said.
"Shiny," Brookie said. She beamed. "Shiiiiiiinnnnnnnyyyyyyyy!"
Kaya, still in Willow's arms, tilted her head to the side pensively, a very Faithlike expression settling over her face.
"Lots of things are shiny," Anya said absentmindedly. "I find shiny things to be sexually arousing." She played with the ends of her hair, her eyes still locked on Xander's.
"That a fact?" Spike asked, arching one eyebrow.
"Like paper clips," Anya said, a down to earth quality clear in her voice. "Or forks."
Spike said nothing. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly as he sensed the men on the perimeters of the school moving in. He stepped closer to Kaya, ready to do whatever he could to protect her. He may have been non-corporeal, but he was still a bad ass.
Without thinking about it, he stroked the little girl's hair protectively. He and Anya had been with the little halfbit since the day she was born.
"Bad things coming," he said under his breath. Those men weren't getting near the little one. He wouldn't let them.
"Like sporks," Anya said, continuing down her long list of shiny turn ons.
"Bad things coming," Kaya whispered. "Like sporks."
Willow and Xander turned to look at her.
"Now that's just a little bit freaky," Xander said. "And cryptic. What's so bad about sporks? I mean sure, the half spooniness half forkiness of them is freaky, but as far as utensils go, I've never seen them as the most malevolent."
Willow nodded.
"What's a spork?" Drew asked, liking the sound of the word. "Spork-spork." With a grin, he bared his teeth at Geyton, who growled playfully back.
"No biting," the adults chorused.
"Shiny?" Brookie asked. "Shiny Sporkie? Shiny Sporkie for Brookie?"
Without a word, Val walked up to Willow and looked up at the child in her arms. Kaya wiggled to get down.
"What do you see?" Val asked.
Kaya looked at Val. "You," she replied casually, waiting a moment before giggling.
"What else?" Val asked softly, sensing there was something more here.
"Others," Kaya said. "My friends. Like Sunny."
"Sunny?" Brandon asked, despite himself.
"Maybe it's her 'maginary friend," Noelle said. "I had one of those."
Brandon scoffed, brooded, and deliberately didn't think about the fact that, once upon a time, he'd had an imaginary friend. An imaginary tiger friend wasn't the same thing. It was less girly. Mr. Big Paws hadn't been girly at all. His mom had said so, and Brandon's mom knew everything. His mom wasn't a girl. Not at all.
"He had a sword," Noelle continued dreamily, talking about her imaginary friend.
"No," Kaya said loudly, stubbornly, wrapping her arms around her chest and wriggling to get out of Willow's arms. "Sunny was real." She looked at the ground. "Sunny went away. She told me she'd take care of Sunny, but Sunny went away."
"Who told you she'd take care of Sunny?" Xander asked, wondering if the she in question could be Anya.
Kaya met his eyes. "Darla," she said.
Silence fell over the room.
"Damn," Kaya said, filling the void cheerfully with a word she knew she wasn't supposed to say. Sometimes Kaya liked to be just a little bit bad.
"Kaya Joyce." Faith said sharply, coming into the room with Buffy on her heels. Kaya looked sheepishly up at her mother.
"Hi Mommy," she said. The little girl looked at Buffy. "Hi you," she said. Buffy wondered if she'd ever get a name from the child. Thus far, she'd spent all morning as 'you.'
"Mommy doesn't want you to say those words, baby," Faith said firmly, catching the little girl in her arms when Kaya flung herself at her mother. She gave the child a hard look, and Kaya looked down at the ground for a moment.
"Kaya love Mommy," Kaya said, half in apology, half in glee, snuggling into Faith's arms.
"Mommy loves Kaya," Faith replied, holding the girl close and feeling her heartbeat.
Willow, Buffy, and Xander watched with awkward awe at the interaction between Faith and her daughter.
"Claire-Claire," Brookie said, bouncing over to the older girl. "When Daddy get here?"
Claire looked down at the smaller girl. The two girls looked so little alike, Claire with her dark hair and hazel eyes and Brookie with wild honey blonde hair, cut in a short pixie style and sticking out all over, that the staff continually forgot that the two were related.
"Daddy will be here soon, Brookie," Claire said with the air of an older sister.
A moment later, a dark haired man stuck his head into the room.
"DADDY!" Both girls greeted him at the top of their lungs.
Brandon shuddered and slapped his hands over his ears.
"Miss Willow," Val said softly. "I think Drew and Geyton are gonna eat each other."
"No biting," everyone in the room except for Lindsey, who was a bit out of the loop, and Geyton and Drew, who each had their mouths full with the other's foot, said at once.
Buffy sent a bright smile at the girls' father. "Hey there, Mr. McDonald," she said, trying to seem like a got-it-together preschool teacher. "It's been a little bit of a crazy day around here, today. We had finger painting this morning, and the kids are still a little wired up."
"Educational finger painting," Willow said, emphasizing her words with a nod.
"With numbers and letters and… Cheetohs," Xander said, trying to sound official. The three of them spent a great deal of time convincing the parents of Potential's student of the validness of the curriculum.
"Cheetohs?" Willow mouthed. Xander shrugged.
"We played Weapons!" Claire told her father candidly.
"No weapons for Brookie," Brookie said, her lower lip jutting out in memory.
Lindsey smiled at the poor pre-school teachers, a wry but good natured grin. "Educational weapons play," he said with a straight face.
"Yup," Willow said.
"Of course," Buffy said.
"Spork," Drew added thoughtfully, having obediently removed Geyton's foot from his mouth.
"SPORK!" Claire yelled.
"Sporkie-sporkie-sporkie," Brookie sang.
Lindsey grinned. His girls were something else.
Kaya followed Spike's gaze out the window. "Bad things coming," she said.
Lindsey saw the new child and looked at her with interest. Ever since he'd seen his younger sister's children, living a neglected existence in extreme poverty, and ever since he'd found out they were slayers and adopted them as his own, he'd developed an incredible interest in children of all kinds, especially the children who attended Potential. Special children.
The new child had dark hair, and there was something very familiar about her. When Lindsey saw the woman holding the girl, he didn't so much as blink, despite the surprise he felt keenly in his stomach.
"Faith," he said smoothly.
Faith narrowed her eyes at him in memory, but seeing the way the two little girls were beaming up at him, she couldn't help but soften a little. Kaya had changed her life; Faith figured that with children, anything was possible.
Outside, the demon and men who made up the acquisitions department of the sub-surface division of Wolfram and Hart watched quietly.
They needed three girls. Slayers. Their blood ties to the company had forced the men to these three.
A sacrifice was needed. The cause was worthy. There was money involved, of course, and power.
There was little these men, these monsters wouldn't sacrifice for the ability to channel the powers of the dead.
TBC… next up, some action, and you'll see a few more familiar faces (one from Buffy seasons one and three, and one from Angel season one… are ya curious yet?)… more on Sunny, what Kaya sees, and what exactly is going on in LA, plus some more of those we know and love on the other side of life, more about Kaya's birth, and some quality time with Kaya, Geyton, Val, Drew, Brandon, Claire, Noelle, and Brookie…
Oh, and if you have time, go check out lilcloudofcalm's story "Isara Rosenberg"… you'll see some great kiddos in the third chapter, and plenty of quality Anya. You can find a link to the story in my favorite stories list. Check it out. It's worth the time.
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