EPILOGUE: Point of no return

It's been a few weeks since the whole Faith-thing. According to Giles, she's actually handling her rehab quite admirably (his words). I don't really know how I feel, yet. It's all still so confusing. Oh, and Riley and I broke up. And, yeah, I guess I'm kinda pregnant. We figured out that it's not his baby. I'm keeping it. Her. I think it's a her, a girl.

Buffy sighed, flipping her journal closed. Writing it down just made it all too real, and she wanted it to be not-real a wwhile longer. She can hear her mom in the kitchen, waiting for her to get ready for her doctor's appointment, which she really wasn't looking forward to. She sighed again, rolling onto her back. Her hands rest automatically on her stomach.

There was no visible difference yet, it was still too soon to tell, but she thought she could feel a change. Subtle, but there. The Slayer idly wondered if she would be able to hear the baby's heartbeat, and then if she'd be freaked out by that.

"A baby. I'm having a baby. I, Buffy Summers, am having Faith's baby."

She had freaked out when Tara rendered her verdict. The witches had rushed over to Giles' condo after Buffy found Riley, and had explained to the Watcher what they'd found. It didn't make any sense to Buffy; until Tara said those words, she hadn't even known they were talking about her!

"Wait, what? I'm what?" she'd practically shouted.

Tara and Willow had been meditating, trying to synchronize their energies to do some spell (?), and they had locked onto some pretty impressive magickal signature (again, ?), and apparently Faith had manage to knock Buffy up.

Naturally, the blonde Slayer denied it. "I am not pregnant. For one thing, I never had sex with Faith. For another thing, she's a girl! Unless there's something else..."

She was interrupted by an excited Willow. "She magically impregnated you, Buffy!"

Of course, since that happened all the time.

Willow continued off her look. "She probably used something, a talisman, to change herself into..."

And lightbulbs flashed in her head. "It wasn't Riley. She waited for him, whacked him over the head, stole his body, and raped me." You could hear pins drop.

"I'm gonna faint now." And Buffy did.

She decided not to tell Faith, and broke up with Riley the next day. Willow and Tara went with her to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test, which was negative, because it was too soon to tell. They waited seven days before going again. This time it wasn't negative.

When she told her mom, Joyce cried. And held her when she cried too. And then told her to stop patrolling until after the baby was born, which she refused to do because she wasn't an invalid, and you couldn't even tell she was ... By which point she started crying again. It was a very emotional time.

Now, she was getting ready to go to the doctor's, to get checked out, and start her pre-natal course.

Buffy looks at the journal one last time, before leaving her room. It had come in the mail two days ago, with no return address. She suspects it's from Faith, but prefers not to know.

On the first page, there is written simply REMEMBER.

A/N: Wow, that's it! Maybe there will be a sequel, I don't really know. Thank you to all who have taken this ride with me.