Title: Change
Author: MSKBSwedish
Rating: Mature
Summery: Three years have come since the fateful night that Linn was brought home safely from being held in the clutches of Angelus and Dru. Now Buffy and Spike, who have put their parenthood before slaying, have to not only battle vampires and demons but their children as well.
Note: I own nothing of the Buffyverse.

Chapter Five – Miracle

Trying to fit the shirt over her large belly was turning out to be more difficult than she expected. "So much for maternity wear." Buffy sighed, giving up and taking the shirt off completely. She tossed the shirt in the trash and turned to go grab another shirt from her closet. She decided to settle on the black long sleeve shirt that seemed to always fit over her belly.

Once she was dressed, Buffy walked out of her bed room and down the hall where her daughter's room was. Buffy walked into the room and began picking up their clothes from the morning. Linn was at school and Emmy was out with Willow and Tara. She decided she would get some much needed cleaning done while Spike slept and the girls were out.

The slayer began to straighten up their bed room. Making their beds, putting their clean laundry away and grabbing their dirty laundry to take into the basement with her to add to the rest of the laundry that needed to be washed.

Domestic life was a lot more enjoyable for Buffy since becoming a mother. Her slayer duties had been put on hold, especially the last few months. Motherhood was never something Buffy thought she would enjoy once she became a slayer. But here she was, a slayer and two children with one on the way. She was actually enjoying the little things about domestic life. It was like she was on a vacation from being a slayer and getting to feel... normal.

Buffy made her way down into the basement with a hamper full of clothes which were a mixture of all of their clothes. She sat the hamper down and began removing the clothes from the dryer. She sat them on the table so they could be folded. She walked over to the washer and began throwing those clothes into the dryer. She threw in a dryer sheet and turned the dryer on before beginning to separate the darks and colors from the whites to throw into the washer when she got another pain.

The pregnant blond winced in pain. Her hand rubbed the underside of her belly while her other hand gripped the washer to keep herself standing. She gasped as the pain grew momentarily. "Oh god." Buffy whimpered. "Please, don't do this." She whispered once more. It was the second time that morning that she was feeling another contraction.

Once the contraction subsided, Buffy went on about the laundry. She was in the middle of folding clothes when she heard the telephone ring. She moved as fast as she could, being pregnant and all, to make her way upstairs and into the kitchen.

"Hello?" Buffy said when she answered the phone. "This is she." Buffy yawned and leaned against the wall. "No Malin is in Ms. Lawson's class." Buffy perked up a little when she realized the person on the other end was speaking about her daughter. "She bit him? A-Are you sure?" Buffy put her hand over her mouth as worry came over her. "N-No. I'll be right there." Buffy quickly hung up the phone and grabbed the keys to her car.

"No biting! How many times have we told you that, Malin? No biting! You can punch, y-you can hit and you can kick! But no biting!" Buffy yelled at her seven year old who stood in their living room looking very angry.

"He started it, mum! He bit me first!" Linn argued.

"I don't care! You tell the teacher!" Buffy began to pace as she put her hand to her head. "I don't understand why you don't listen. I keep trying to tell you these things and you just don't get it. You can't just go around doing whatever you want because you feel the urge to do these things. You want to bite someone now? I mean this is just great. I thought we wouldn't have to deal with this until maybe you were in your teens but already you're getting the urge to bite people." Buffy began to ramble as the worry filled her.

"Mummy, I said I was sorry!" Linn tried to explain. "Cody bit me and I couldn't help it! I just bit back!"

Buffy turned and looked at her daughter. "You have no idea what you could have done, Malin." Buffy sat down on the edge of the coffee table and grabbed her daughter's shoulders firmly. "You are special, okay? If you bite someone you have the power to seriously hurt them. This Cody kid had to go to the hospital and we are going to be lucky if his mother and father don't press charges on us. Malin they could take you and Emmy away from us." Buffy didn't want to burden her daughter with a grown up problem, she just wanted her to be a kid but the fact that Linn had bit a boy at school and even managed to drink some of his blood, it was hard to think of her as a child in that moment.

"I don't want them to take me away!" Linn suddenly cried.

"I don't want them to either! This is why you can't do these things." Buffy wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her close. She stroked her daughters hair as she closed her eyes. "I love you girls more than anything in the world and if someone tries to take you away from me and your dad, I'll never be able to live with myself." Buffy sighed as she pushed her tears back at the thought of her world being snatched from her arms.

Footsteps could be heard as Spike hurried down the stairs to join his girlfriend and daughter while pulling his shirt over his head.

"You are in big trouble, little miss." Spike growled before rounding the corner to see Buffy holding Linn in her arms. "So this is how we punish them?" Spike asked, suddenly confused. "I thought I was the good guy." Spike said as he looked in on them.

"She got a lip full from me in the car and when we got here, okay?" Buffy sighed.

"And you're consoling her for that?" Spike raised a brow. "This parenting thing is just bloody confusing sometimes."

Buffy eyed Spike. "Enough with the English cursing, Spike, please." Buffy said before she pulled Linn away and looked down at her daughter. "Go to your room for a little bit. I need to talk with dad." Buffy said to Linn.

Linn simply nodded and ran up the stairs to her room.

Buffy slowly stood up and looked over at Spike. "I'm taking her out of school. Plain and simple. They can't be around normal kids."

"Well what happened?" Spike asked while running a hand through his hair.

"This kid Cody in her class apparently bit Linn so she bit him back but she kinda... drank some of him." Buffy grimaced at the last part.

"Oh well done! Why are we going to punish her then, love? She needs to be able to stick up for herself." Spike threw his arms up in confusion.

"Because if the authorities get involved, they will take Emily and Malin and this new baby away from us. Do you want that? D-do you want our children to be taken away after fighting so hard to keep just one? We will then have to fight for three and not from some demon we can just kill. No this will be real humans who have the authority to take our children away." Buffy explained to Spike.

"Of course I don't want them taken from me but I damn sure will not punish my child for sticking up for herself." Spike shook his head and crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, pet, but I will not fight her. She needs to be able to protect herself."

Buffy sighed, "And you make a valid point but not with biting. Biting is dangerous for the girls. They've never drunk human blood from the source. They have never tasted that sort of... thing. What if it causes them to lose control and we end up with a seven year old killer on our hands? How do we protect her? How to we explain to some poor kid's parents? Oh I'm sorry, my boyfriend's a vampire and I'm a slayer and we had to fulfill a prophecy to save a bunch of people and oh look we had a kid out of it and decided to keep it. Excuse my daughter she's half vampire, she likes the occasional taste of the second grader." Buffy crossed her arms over her chest and sighed heavily again.

"Well, when you put it like that..." Spike sighed as well.

"I don't know what we are going to do. I just know for her safety and for our sake she's going to be pulled from school and I will hire a tutor or home school her myself. This can't happen again." Buffy explained as she went to walk out of the room.

Before Buffy could get to the kitchen she felt another sharp pain. This time it was intense and it caused her to fall against the wall, pulling the phone from the wall and making a loud crash on the floor.

"Buffy?" Spike called out. He heard her shriek from the kitchen which caused him to run into the kitchen.

Spike looked down to see Buffy sitting against the wall grabbing her stomach in pain. His eyes drifted down when he smelled the familiar scent of her blood. With her skirt hitched up from the fall, he could see the red blood that was beginning to drip down between her thighs.

Buffy looked up at Spike, her bottom lip quivering. "Something's wrong."

The waiting game was the hardest. The waiting was the worst part about being in the hospital. Not knowing. Watching the others walk around, some hustling. The smell of blood mixed with hand sanitizer. It was clean to most but to a vampire, he could smell the stench of death. He could smell every stained splatter and drop. It was easy for a vampire to find it both terrifying and comforting.

Spike held Emily in his lap as she slept against him, her thumb secured between her lips. Linn laid on the couch beside him with her head in his lap. He stroked her hair and back while she slept.

Glancing around the room, Tara, Xander and Anya seemed the most relaxed. Dawn looked more worried of them all. Willow looked slightly frightened. Giles looked worried but Spike knew exactly what the watcher was thinking, that Buffy would pull through.

It had been hours now. Spike rushed Buffy to the hospital after the fall earlier. He wasn't a fan of hospitals but he had no choice. His guilty conscious wasn't going to allow him to just lay Buffy in their bed and call Willow, especially if something was wrong with Buffy and the baby. Still, they had no word from the doctors. No word whether either was dead or alive or if they were having tea and knitting baby booties. Either way, Spike was beginning to get antsy but he had to stay calm for his daughters who were rather scared that their mother and sibling were in danger.

More hours passed. Dawn and Tara took the girls to go get food from the cafeteria. Willow even had time to make a trip back to Buffy's to grab blood for the girls and came back in time. Still, there was no word. No doctor. Nothing. It was just an eerie silence that seemed to fall over the maternity ward. Spike wished he could just make everything okay but he wasn't sure that would be possible.

"Mr. Pratt?" Suddenly a doctor's voice called out.

Within an instant, Spike was standing and making his way to the short bald man. He didn't look like he had the skills to protect his lover and their child but Spike knew that humans were... human.

"That's me. Is Buffy okay? Is the baby okay?" Spike asked quickly.

"I'm Dr. Maynard. Well there were some complications. Does Buffy suffer from high blood pressure?" The doctor asked curiously.

Spike shrugged. "I'm not sure. I don't think so."

Dr. Maynard sighed. "Well I'll just get right to it. Buffy and the baby are doing alright, for now. I need to tell you that your girlfriend is very lucky. It seems Buffy was suffering from pre-eclampsia. It usually begins sometime after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Which usually causes high blood pressure, severe headaches, vomiting, feeling unwell major swelling. Most cases in which if caught early on, this can be adjusted and looked after carefully. Buffy somehow survived as well as the baby which is a slim to none chance, especially seeing that your girlfriend has received no medical attention at all from a healthcare provider."

"Alright so... what happened?" Spike asked. Obviously if Buffy had this pre-eclampsia thing, what happened?

"Buffy's body was getting worse. If you had waited any longer, she would have went into full eclampsia and we could have lost her and the baby. Thankfully, we stabilized her blood pressure and were able to get your son out quite quickly. We are still running some tests but it looks like both Buffy and the baby will be fine."

'Your son.' The words struck Spike. A boy. They had a boy. He has a son. Tears welled up quickly in his eyes at the thought of seeing his girlfriend and their son.

"W-When can I see them?" Spike sniffled.

"Buffy is still in surgery. That's the other thing I wanted to discuss. Is Buffy a fighter? Does she get into a lot of fights? Physical fights?" Dr. Maynard asked.

Spike nodded his head. "She uh... She... She's a private detective. Get's a bit dodgy and violent at times." Spike lied.

"I see. I must say, your girlfriend is a walking, talking miracle. I'm shocked she had two children before let alone one." Dr. Maynard sighed and looked up at Spike. "I'm not sure how to tell you this but we had to tie Buffy's tubes. If she were to carry another child Mr. Pratt, she and the child could die. She has immense amounts of pelvic adhesions around her uterus and her ovaries which are usually as a result from previous surgeries or injuries sustained to the abdomen area."

Spike listened to the doctor closely. He wasn't familiar with most of the terminology but he understood the gist of it. Buffy's girly bits were damaged from the constant slayage that she wouldn't be having anymore children. It wasn't the end of the world however. They still had their three children.

"When can I see them?" Spike asked again.

"You may see your son any time you'd like. I will have a nurse come to update you when Buffy is out of surgery." Dr. Maynard gave Spike an apologetic smile. It never made the job easy.

"Thank you, doc. Truly. Thank you." Spike gave him a small smile. He saved the baby and Buffy. Could he really ask for more?

...TBC...