A/N; Sorry about the delay. I said three to five days, and clearly I was wrong. I shouldn't make promises I can't keep. To make it up to you, I'll post chapter 12 and 13 at the same time. How's that? I know these chapters kind of slow, but I felt these conversations between Buffy And Spike were essential to the story. Feel free to complain if you think otherwise.

As always, reviews are more precious than gold to me. That is if I have any readers left. Oh well, maybe I'm writing only for myself then. Guess I can live with that if I have to. *Sniffle*

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Six weeks after closing the Hellmouth

She was bent over the toilet. Again. It was the fifth morning in a row, and she was amazed she'd been able to keep it unnoticed for even that long, considering people seemed to run in and out of her room all the time. Incredibly enough, not one of them seemed to have mastered the complicated art of knocking.

But now the game was up. Dawn had cornered her. And of course, she'd summoned Willow, and even Kennedy, despite the fact that Dawn really didn't like the girl. But where Willow went, there went Kennedy.

Dawn was easily scared. She'd already lost her mother, and Buffy had died on her once. She didn't plan on losing her again. And Buffy never got sick. Never! And now Dawn had stumbled upon her while she was throwing her guts out. And so, of course, she'd had a mild panic attack, and rushed to get Willow, because clearly Buffy was dying on them again.

Brilliant.

After she'd emerged from the bathroom, there had been the standard intervention to attend, with the usual judge (Giles), and jury (Willow, Dawn and this time, Kennedy), but minus Xander. He'd never fully recovered from loosing Anya in the Hellmouth, and had more or less isolated himself after the battle, seldom talking to anyone.

The first thing out of Willows mouth had been 'bulimia'. It seemed to fit. Buffy had been loosing a great deal of weight the last two years (what with the being dead and all), and an eating disorder brought on by stress and depression seemed like a passable explanation. However, when Buffy pointed out that it was seven thirty in the morning and that she hadn't even eaten breakfast yet, that train of thought quickly derailed. She herself was adamant that it was nothing more serious than a simple stomach flu, and that seemed to be generally accepted by the court of assembled scoobies. Until Kennedy spoke up.

"Perhaps you should take a pregnancy test?"

And so, chaos ensued.

It took a couple of minutes to get the shouting down to such a level that she could explain that there was no possibility whatsoever that she might be pregnant, because the only person she'd had sex with the past year had been Spike. Even as she had to fight the tears and the clogging of her throat, she'd even promised to take a pregnancy test anyway, just to prove she was right.

So Willow brought home a little stick that afternoon, and personally guarded the bathroom door the next morning, when Buffy took the test.

Buffy stood with the stick in her hand and stared with unseeing eyes into the bathroom mirror, thinking how absolutely stupid this whole thing was. She wasn't pregnant. You have to have sex in order to become pregnant, and even though she technically had met that requirement, you still couldn't get pregnant by someone who was one hundred percent sterile. Vampires couldn't have children. Simple as that. No exceptions.

The time was up. She glanced at the stick, even though she knew what the result would be. She sighed. Yep, it was negative all right. She was just about to toss it in the garbage when she stopped herself. She had to look again. Was it one or two lines that meant positive? She checked the box, just to bee sure.

The only verbal response to the biggest chock of her entire life had been a quiet 'Oh'.

Then she screamed for Willow.

***

"We did every possible test we could think of," Buffy continued her story whilst Spike listened intently, drinking up her every word like a man dying of thirst. "Both by magic and the normal, medical way. The only thing we could see was that whatever I was carrying was healthy and completely human. Willow could find no trace of anything demonic whatsoever. Giles nearly had a complete breakdown. When he questioned me about my sex life the last year, we both nearly died of embarrassment." She quirked her lips a little, but shuddered noticeably at the same time.

"He didn't believe me at first when I said I'd only been with you, and even made me undergo a combined truth-and-reviling spell, to check if my memory'd gone wonky. When it showed I was telling the truth, he nearly had a heart attack."

She paused, and studied Spike carefully. His eyes were suspiciously glassy, and his jaw was tightly clenched, but other than that his face showed nothing of the raging war of emotions that was currently going on inside him. It was not that he was trying to hide his reaction from her, it was that there simply was to many emotions screaming and demanding attention at the same time. All equally strong, fighting to reach the surface, and the result was an almost eerily stony expression that currently showed on his face.

The feeling wasn't unfamiliar. When it came to Buffy, he'd lived with the inner turmoil of conflicting feelings since the day he met her, so he was used to it. But right now, it nearly did him in. It was almost too much. Finally, the war was won by his old and trusty friend, Complete Confusion. When Buffy saw his face settling in a questioning mask, she took that as a sign to continue. She lowered her eyes to the mattress, and spoke up again.

"I... Some people... there were people that wanted me to get rid of the baby right away..."

"Because it was mine."Spike interrupted her, barely whispering the words. It had finally sunken in. She was telling the truth. Buffy's lips quirked into a sad little smile, but she didn't look up from the mattress. She wasn't done yet. She continued.

"I was so angry at them. I actually had to move out for a while. Until then I'd had my own space in the council building in London, but after I heard them say that... I just couldn't take it anymore. I managed to get my own apartment, and Dawn came with me. She's been amazing, she's been there the entire time." Heather made a gurgling noise from her place in her mothers lap, and Buffy trailed of again. It seemed like she zoned out, and although Spike was hesitant to say something to interrupt her, he wanted to hear her tell him about the birth. When he almost lost her.

"Buffy... What happened when... when she was born?" He asked, with a clearly audible tremble in his voice. He saw her close her eyes and shake her had slightly, before she started talking again.

"It was a pretty easy pregnancy. I guess I had some help with the whole 'super slayer stamina' thing. I bloated like a balloon, but I felt great the entire time. And I was happy. Actually happy. I really can't remember feeling like that since the first time I died." She smirked t that."That's a pretty weird thing to say, right? 'The first time I died...'" She let out a quiet chuckle, and even Spike couldn't help but smile slightly at that. She quickly sobered though.

"I told you I went ten days over time, right? Those last days were the longest of my life. I was big as a whale, and my back was killing me. I couldn't wait until 'the big day', you know?" He nodded. He could imagine. If he'd been there with her, he would probably have climbed the walls. Patience was never his forte.

But he hadn't been there. He'd been in LA with the great poof. Eight months ago... about the time he became corporeal again. A horrible thought occurred to him; What if she'd gone into labour right about the time he'd had his little stunt with Harmony? He felt the acid rise in his throat. He shuddered and his face distorted into a grimace. Luckily, Buffy didn't notice. She was looking at the bed again. When she continued, it was in a lower voice than before.

"When I went into labour, I was ecstatic. I was so happy it was finally happening! It was just Dawn and me in the apartment. It was in the middle of the night. Dawn called a cab and they rushed me to the hospital. We were about halfway there when I started bleeding." She had to take a deep breath at that point. "It was really bad. It was so much blood. Dawn nearly panicked, but she held it together. I can't remember much of it, except for the pain. And I was afraid. I've never been so scared in my entire life. I knew something wasn't right. Before we made it to the hospital, I passed out. Everything that happened after that, other people told me about."

Spike was silent. He didn't know what to say. He just looked at her, silently imploring her to continue talking. And she did.

"There were complications. Apparently, the doctors were quite perplexed." They both smiled at her involuntary Giles-ism, despite the serious topic. "The didn't really know what was wrong, or were all the blood came from. They decided their best bet was an emergency C-section. When Heather was born she was perfectly healthy, but I'd lost a lot of blood. I didn't wake up."

"What happened? What went wrong?" Spike asked, reaching for her hand. It was as much for giving her support as for getting it from her. He was pretty badly shaken.

"We still don't know exactly. The doctors had a theory about fragile blood vessels, but apparently, as soon the baby was out of me I stopped bleeding. They'd never seen anything like it. And then I just stayed unconscious. They told me it was touch and go for a while whether I'd make it or not. I was out for a week." The tears, never far under the surface since she'd first realised he was back, came through again. "I didn't see my daughter until she was a week old, and when I woke up I was too weak to even hold her. It felt like I'd been drained, wrought out like a used towel. I could barely lift my arms."

She sniffled a little, and made an effort to collect herself. She'd cried enough for one day. Actually, shed reached her crying limit for the next month. She didn't like it. She felt weak when she cried. She felt so... girly.

"Dawn had called Giles, and he, Willow and Xander was there when I woke up. They were really great. They asked me to come back to the council, and I said yes. It took me two months before I was feeling like my old self again. I thought it took a long time, but apparently it should have taken twice as long. Slayer healing does have its perks. " She actually giggled a little, and Spike looked like a big question mark before she offered an explanation. "You should have seen Giles with Heather when I was still recuperating. He was the picture-perfect grandfather incarnate! He adores her. Well, they all do."

"Of course they do. I have no problem imagining that. She's the most perfect child I've ever seen." Spike actually beamed, and a shadow of his trademark arrogant smirk was actually showing through. He reached out a hand towards Heather, but didn't quite touch her. He didn't dare, yet. His smile faded a little, but was still noticeably there. "And I'm not just saying that because she's..." He trailed off.

"Because she's yours." Buffy lifted her hand and put it against his cheek. She gently caressed his face with her thumb.

"She's mine..." He said that in barely a whisper, with awe in his voice. For the first time since Buffy'd began talking, they made eye contact. They sat on the bed next to each other, and just looked. Buffy opened her mouth to say somethin, but she didn't get the chance.

There was a knock on the door. The time was up.

***

Even though he didn't get an answer to his knocking, Barnaby entered the room he'd left exactly forty minutes earlier. He had sent Jones home, to rest up a bit. It had seemed like he needed it. He found the three persons exactly where he'd left them, the two grown-ups sitting beside each other on the bed, the woman with the child on her lap. He hoped they had talked things through by now, because now it was his turn to get some answers. The coffee had helped to calm down his strained temper, but he was still pretty irritated.

"I hope you're ready to answer some questions now," he said, with a calculated stern look on his face that had been perfected over the years he'd worked as a policeman, specially constructed to make criminals confess to all kinds of crimes just by looking at it. It usually worked to, but these two just looked at him, and then looked at each other. The girl shrugged her shoulders, apparently deciding she was the one that was going to talk to him.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

Barnaby let out a quiet, relieved sigh. Perhaps now, things would get easier. He sat down on the only chair in the room, opposite the bed. He fished up a small notebook and a pen from a pocket inside his jacket. Finally he would get some answers. At least he hoped so.