For disclaimers see Chapter 1
Upon their arrival back at the Summers house Tara walked straight up to their room and closed the door behind them. She sat down on the bed and Willow quickly joined her.
"Okay now you really have to tell me cuz I'm freaking out baby, I mean you say it's not bad but then why do we have to wait till here and maybe it's not like cancer-bad but it's still bad and – "
"I'm pregnant." Tara said simply but loudly to shut her babbling girlfriend up.
Willow's jaw dropped. "You're WHAT! How can you be pregnant?" Willow's mind was running in circles.
"I asked that too. I mean, you're the only person I've ever had sex with. And then I remembered the spell."
"The spell? Oh the spell! The man spell! Oh no! Tara! I didn't...we didn't...I didn't even know we should have....did I?"
Tara smiled and kissed her adorable babbling girlfriend. "You did." She said, pulling away. "I didn't think about it either. But think about it, it's kinda cool isn't it? I mean we aren't really ready for a family, and with our lives it'll be tough, but how awesome is it that I'm having your baby?" She grinned.
Willow's eyes went wide. "That is pretty amazing. Wow, you're having my baby!" She reached down and lifted Tara's shirt so she could see her belly. She peered closely at it, as if she expected it to grow as she watched.
Tara giggled. "Honey, I don't think you can tell yet. It's only been six weeks."
"I don't care, I know Tara-tummy and I bet I can tell!" she continued her inspection, running her hands almost reverently over Tara's skin. "Okay, you're right, it's the same." She said finally, pouting a little.
"Aw, don't worry, I'm sure I'll be showing before you know it." Tara reminded her.
Willow grew serious. "Tara....Are you really okay with this? That stupid spell...maybe it would have been better if I had never done it..."
"Will, that spell helped you see that the path you were going down was the wrong one. I...I was worried I wasn't going to be able to stay with you." She admitted. "But after that, you didn't do any spells for a whole week. And now you think before you use magic. That spell...let's just say I'm very glad you did the spell. And as for the baby...well who are we to frown on such a wonderful gift?"
Willow's eyes were watery and she had trouble speaking. "I was really that bad, huh."
Tara lifted her chin so she could look her in the eyes. "Yes, you were. Emphasis on the past tense. I'm so proud of you Willow." She kissed her passionately to exaggerate her point.
When they finally came up for air, they were laying on the bed holding each other.
"How are we going to tell the Scoobies?" Willow asked suddenly.
"I guess we'll have to tell them about the spell." Tara giggled.
"What! Oh god...I'm never going to live this one down." Willow buried her face in Tara's chest. Tara tried unsuccessfully to stop laughing and settled for stroking her girlfriend's hair. "We have to tell them honey."
"I know...." Willow's muffled voice said.
"Will! Tara!" Buffy's voice came up the stairs. Willow groaned.
"Can I come in?" Buffy said from outside their door.
"Sure Buff, come on in." Willow said.
The door opened but nobody appeared to enter. "Buffy?" Willow started to get up and see why her best friend had opened the door and not come in when she heard her voice.
"Don't bother looking for me I'm right here. Only you can't see me. I'm invisible. Any ideas?" A tube of lipstick on the chest of drawers appeared to float in midair and bounce up and down as Buffy tossed it from hand to hand.
"Wow...um...did something happen to you? Wait a sec, have you been feeling...ignored lately?" Willow asked cautiously.
"Yeah, ignored, I
wish. No, this isn't a Marcie deal. I don't know what happened. I
left Main Street after getting my hair cut, and-"
"You cut
your hair?" Willow interrupted.
"Oh, yeah!" said the
disembodied Buffy voice. The lipstick stopped bouncing and hovered
mid-air.
"Really? How short?"
"Um, about up to here ...
well, if you could see my hand, it's kind of above my
shoulders."
"Oh, sounds cute!" Willow said
enthusiastically.
"Um...can we get back to freaking out about
no-show Buffy?" Tara put in quietly.
"Oh! Yeah of course." Willow said, chastised. "So you were walking on Main Street and you were suddenly invisible?"
"Yep!"
"Uh...okay we can go check out the area, do you want to come with?" Willow offered.
"Nah, I've got some things I just realized I should do." Buffy said oddly. "Let me know what you find." The crystal was replaced and the door swung shut. She was off to Spike's to have a little fun with her new invisible body.
"That was weird." Willow observed.
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A few hours later, the witches returned home with information on the invisibility perps. "I'll check the Department of Motor Vehicles for that mystery van, you can start looking at the books here for invisibility spells, okay? Xander and Anya are on the Magic Shop ones with that pylon we found."
Tara nodded and made her way to the stacks of books in the corner. Most books they kept at the Magic Shop but there were always some around here for one reason or another.
"Bingo!" Willow said.
Tara looked up from her books. "Did you find something?"
"The address for that van. I'm going to go check it out. You want to keep looking?"
"Sure. Call if you need me." Tara returned to the research.
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Willow reached the address she had written on a piece of paper and snuck into the basement of the house, near where she found the black van parked. She walked around the room, finding inanely labelled blueprints for an "Invisibility Ray" as well as what appeared to be the actual machine. Suddenly she heard a voice say "Now!" and before she knew it, she was tied up with duct tape.
"Congratulations. You're our first hostage." Said the invisible voice.
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"Tara!" Buffy called up the stairs. "Tara, come quick, someone just called, they have Willow! I have to go meet them."
Tara rushed downstairs. "What do you mean, they have Willow? Where are we going to meet them?" Tara opened the door.
"No! They said I should come alone." Buffy protested.
"I don't care, I'm going with you. I'll hide or something until you make sure it's safe." Tara insisted.
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Five minutes later, the two reached the arcade where Buffy had been instructed to meet Willow's captors. Tara waited nervously outside the arcade. After a few minutes she heard the familiar sounds of fighting, and the arcade patrons started rushing out. Tara did the opposite, rushing in. She saw Willow crawling toward a weird looking gun under a pinball machine. She rushed over, grabbed it, and handed it to her girlfriend.
"Tara! Just a second, I'll have this on the right setting..." she fiddled with the gun and then apparently satisfied, aimed it where it sounded like Buffy was fighting with one of the invisible captors. Both became visible again.
"Jonathon?" Buffy exclaimed in shock.
Willow turned the gun to a plastic-ball filled room where another captor had fallen, turning him visible again too.
"Warren?" Buffy asked in disbelief.
Willow made the third and final captor visible where he was lying on a smashed pinball machine.
"Who are you?" Buffy asked in confusion.
"Andrew." The thin blond man responded in a whiny voice.
Buffy stared at him, still not getting it.
"I summoned the flying monkeys that attacked the high school?"
Buffy looked at Willow, who shrugged.
Warren climbed out of the plastic balls. Jonathan got up and helped Andrew down from the pinball machine.
"During the school
play, you know?" Andrew persisted.
"It's Tucker's brother."
Warren said helpfully.
"Yeah, it's Tucker's brother."
Jonathon agreed.
"Ohh." Buffy and Willow said at the same
time, finally remembering.
Willow and Tara moved to stand by Buffy.
"So you three have,
what, banded together to be pains in my ass?" Buffy asked, putting
her hands on her hips in annoyance.
"We're your arch-nemesises
... ses." Warren said. "You may have beaten us this time,
Slayer, but next time ... um ... uh, next time..."
"Maybe
not!" Jonathon said, throwing something down in front of the Trio.
It burst into smoke and sparks.
Buffy, Willow and Tara coughed and waved at the smoke.
"What do you mean, it's locked? You were supposed to check it!" came Warren's voice through the smoke.
"I forgot!" responded Andrew's whiny one.
The smoke cleared to reveal the Trio standing by the back door looking sheepish.
"I give you my arch-nemesises...ses." Buffy said.
"What's going on in here! I got a bunch of scared kids saying this place is haunted!" A security guard said, coming up behind the women. Buffy and Willow turned to look at him. Tara noticed the Trio opening the door and she quickly waved her hand, saying "Claudo!". The door swung shut and locked as she commanded it in Latin and the Trio whirled to face her angrily.
"They stole the Illumniata diamond, officer." She informed the security guard. Buffy and Willow looked at her in confusion.
"I'll explain later." She assured her friends. "Look, it's right here." She took the invisiblity ray gun from her girlfriend and opened it, revealing the diamond.
The security guard's eyes widened as he took in the sight. "Okay, nobody move." He pulled a radio out of his pocket and radioed the Sunnydale PD.
Tara saw the Trio start to slide toward the door again and held up her hand. "Don't even think about it." She warned them. They slunk back and sat down on the floor in defeat.
"Oh my god Buffy." Willow said suddenly.
"What! This is a matter for the police Wills." Buffy said.
"No, your hair!" she said, smiling. "It is adorable!"
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Four hours later Buffy, Willow, and Tara returned to their house exhausted, after talking to multiple police officers about the events of the day, leaving out certain crucial parts of course.
"I can't believe those nerds." Buffy was still fuming.
"I'm just glad we caught them now. Who knows what they would have tried next." Willow pointed out. "They may have been dorky but they had some real power and drive. They could have caused serious damage with those spells a few weeks ago that were messing you up. We're lucky they didn't."
"Well, they'll have a long time to think about that in prison. That police officer said they could be in there for ten years." Buffy said, not feeling bad in the least.
"Hey Tare, you never told us how you knew they had the Illuminata diamond." Willow said suddenly.
"Oh! Right. Well in my research on invisibility spells I ran into a mention of it being used to cause invisibility and I remembered that it had been stolen recently. I was just going on a hunch that it was in the gun."
"Well, nice hunch baby!" Willow grinned, then her eyes went wide in shock. "Oh! Tara! You shouldn't have come today, what if something happened? We have to be more careful!" she started panicking.
"Don't worry, nothing happened. I couldn't just sit by while you were in danger, you know that!" Tara tried to reassure her girlfriend.
Buffy watched the exchange slightly confused.
"Um, guys, what's up?" she asked finally.
The witches turned guiltily, they had forgotten that Buffy was there. They looked at each other.
"Well, we have to tell her sometime." Tara said, smiling. "You want to do it?"
"Can we tell everyone together? I think it'd be easiest." She murmured. "And it's late, and I'm tired."
"Well you better tell us soon, cause I want to know now." Buffy protested.
"Okay, okay, we'll tell everyone at the Scooby meeting tomorrow all right?" Willow said.
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The next afternoon, the whole gang was gathered in the Magic Box. Buffy was wriggling with anticipation, since she already knew something was up. Dawn, Xander and Anya just thought the meeting was about the evil Nerd Trio and the invisibility spell. In fact that was the main focus of the meeting, but the instant that was over Buffy said "Okay girls, spill it, now!"
Xander, Anya, and Dawn looked at her in confusion. Willow and Tara both blushed and looked at each other.
"Willow and I have some...news." Tara began. "I'm pregnant."
"It's my baby." Willow put in before anyone could go down that road.
"Um, Wills, maybe you didn't pay attention in health class, but I'm pretty sure that's not possible." Xander said.
Willow rolled her eyes at him. "Xander, I know that okay? It's...there was magic involved." She said, blushing. She paused.
"You want me to tell them?" Tara said softly.
"No, no, I can do it." Willow straightened her shoulders. "So about six weeks ago, you know I was having some trouble with magic. Using it too much. Well, I was starting to realize that Tara was right about that, as you all know. What you didn't know that I did a spell that I thought would help me see from a different perspective, to help me see if I was going too far....well I guess it was a little vague and long story short it made me a guy for a day. Anyway, we well, you know, while I was a man and we didn't think about it, and now well you see what happened."
The group just stared at her. Then Buffy started laughing. "You turned yourself into a MAN?"
Willow hid her bright red face in Tara's shoulder and Tara nodded. "It was actually the turning point for her and magic, so from that perspective it was a definite success."
"And the baby side effect...well that's good too, I mean if you'd asked me if I thought we were ready to have a baby two months ago I would have said no, but now that it's coming I can't think of anything unhappy about it." Willow added, kissing her girlfriend for good measure.
Dawn jumped up and hugged both of the witches. "I love you guys! I'll babysit whenever you need it! Oooh! I'm so happy for you!" she grinned.
"Yes, of course, congratulations." Buffy said, still in shock and trying not to laugh anymore thinking about Willow as a man.
"Are you going to be all big and fat for the wedding?" Anya asked bluntly.
"An!" Xander said aghast.
Tara looked taken aback but she thought for a second. "Well it's two months away now, so I might be starting to show but b-barely." Willow's face broke into a smile, thinking about Tara showing.
"You know, there are things you use so this sort of thing doesn't happen." Anya pointed out.
"Anya!" Xander chastised her again.
"Well there are! If we didn't use condoms I'd be pregnant all the time!" Anya pointed out. "Everyone knows that. Why don't they? Just because they're lesbians doesn't mean they don't know what a condom is."
Willow rubbed at her eyes. "Anya, we know what condoms are...we just didn't think about it okay? I mean we don't usually have to worry about that!"
"It's n-not important now anyway." Tara pointed out. "It's a blessing. I'm glad we didn't think about it." She smiled shyly at Willow, who kissed her lightly.
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Willow and Tara walked tentatively into the waiting room of Dr. Yates, the OB/GYN that Dr. Waters had recommended. She had assured them that they could tell her of the unusual circumstances surrounding the conception of their child, but they were still more than a little nervous.
Willow looked around the waiting room as Tara signed in with the receptionist. There were two women sitting alone, two straight couples and another, older, lesbian couple. Willow smiled at them as they took their seats.
"I'm nervous." Tara whispered, looking a little pale.
Willow took her left hand and squeezed it gently. "I'm sure everything will be fine honey."
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"So? How did it go?" Buffy asked the second the witches entered the Magic Box.
Willow grinned and held up a small printout. "Look! Baby! Picture!" she got the words out, but grammar was currently escaping her.
Tara grinned at her enthusiastic girlfriend. "Everything was fine. Dr. Yates was very nice, and she knows about magic so she understands. It was weird to tell her, but I'm glad we could. I'd hate to go through this with a doctor who thought I cheated on Willow or something."
