Chapter One Hundred and Fifty

Little (Bit) Further

New Sunnydale, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007

"XANDER!" Anya stood in the kitchen over a puddle of suspiciously pale yellow fluid. She was wet and sticky and huge and felt awful. It was early enough in the day that Xander hadn't gone to work yet, but he had been considering staying home anyway, this near to Anya's due date. He rushed into the kitchen and saw his wife - mid-panic, mid-pain, doubled over, yelling. "XANDER! What's happening to me?" She shouted, looking up at him, fear deeply routed in her eyes.

Xander smiled before he did anything, then he rushed over and took her hand. "An, stop. I think you're going to have the baby. You're gonna be fine, we just have to get to the hospital."

"But no. But it can't be yet. I'm not ready yet, Xander we haven't got everything!" She yelled back, groaning as the very obvious contraction continued.

"It's okay, there's stuff we can get later, you're probably going to be in the hospital overnight anyway, we can get stuff when we get back. All you have to do is concentrate on yourself." He grabbed her under the arm as the contraction eased off and Anya was able to stand upright again. She took a deep breath and leaned into Xander's shoulder.

"We can do this," she whispered, closing her eyes for a second, placing her hand over her bump and trying to remember what the book said about this part. But she hadn't read it yet, she'd been too scared. She was totally unprepared. And then everything had happened so fast and... "Deep breath in, deep breath out." She repeated. Xander knew she was panicking, because acting too calm about this. But she was remembering her breathing exercises so the classes and books had helped somewhat.

Xander helped her out of the house and into the car whilst he ran to grab the prepacked hospital bag. "Ready An?" He said in the car, poised over the steering wheel. She nodded back nervously, carefully pulling across her seatbelt and staring out of the window to take her mind off the aching pain.

San Francisco, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007

Willow and Tara sat with their breakfast. A normal morning, one witch planning her weekly coven meeting, and the other sorting out a placement for her first teaching semester. The training course Tara was on, had finished it's classroom time and now she had to find two semesters at different schools to finish her qualifications. It was new territory, she was going into full time work at something she really wanted to do. Before now she'd been studying part time, and working boring dead end jobs. This was something she wanted, and was fully intending on grabbing it with both hands. And although she'd left home on her own and moved across the country and then faced the end of the world (four times) and moved to a completely different country. This still gave her belly butterflies. The toast was helping.

Willow had her grimoire out on the table. Part-journal, part-spellbook, and part-record of everything they'd faced in Sunnydale and beyond, it was a book of mass importance. It'd helped her through her toughest times, when magic was betraying her, or she it. She currently making a new one, a book of shadows for the whole coven to use. So far it had a few introductory pages and a few spells they'd attempted together, (some successful, some not so much.) But there was more to add because in the months that the coven had been together, they'd been making progress rather fast. Willow was proud of herself for keeping it altogether. All the girls got along and there hadn't been a fight between them so far as she knew. The only thing was that they spent most of the weekly session chatting and drinking tea. It was either that Astra had turned them all British all of a sudden, or they were turning into the UC Sunnydale campus coven.

It was weight off her mind when phone began to ring...

New Sunnydale, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007

Anya refused to be carried into the hospital. Xander protested, but she refused. She could still walk, in a waddly, penguin sort of way, but she could still walk. She stomped through the revolving doors and banged her fist on the front desk. "I. Am. Having. A. Baby." She said through gritted teeth as Xander caught up with her. Lugging the holdall of spare clothes, toiletries and baby onesies and a toothbrush (a last minute addition).

"Sorry, we're um, well she said it. We're having a baby. Now." He stumbled to the receptionist, who held up a finger to shush them as she was still on the phone. Xander stood waiting whilst Anya clung to his side, panting to make the contraction pass quicker. But they didn't have long to wait as their OB/GYN came round the corner and spotted them waiting.

"Mrs Harris really, I thought we talked about leaving it this late to come in." She said brightly, taking Anya's arm and dragging her away from Xander, who was left, standing alone at reception.

"Right, um, great. So I'll phone er people." He said, grasping his forehead and pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. He looked at the overhead signs for a while, staring until he found the maternity ward sign, but then he had no idea what to do with that information so he sat down in the waiting room and stared at the wall for a while. He forgot entirely that he was supposed to be calling Willow, and Buffy and everyone else to tell them Anya was having the baby. And he just stared, occasionally biting his nails and blinking, because he was forgetting that too. He was having the realisation everybody must have at least once in their lives; nothing will be the same after today. Today is the day my life changes so completely. And it all felt too big, but then he reminded himself that he had helped to avert quite a few apocalypses in his day, and his life had been batted around quite a lot already. So this day that he was becoming a father, really wasn't going to change anything too much.

He rubbed his eye a little too hard and left himself squinting for a while, not being able to see. Which was a pain, but it reminded him what he was supposed to be doing, and he picked up his phone again and dialed Willow and Tara's home number.

"Hello?" Willow said, having gotten up from the table and taking the phone from its cradle as it rang.

"Hi Will," Xander replied through the thin satellite connection. "I'm er at the hospital."

"Oh. Are you okay? Is Anya okay? What did you do?" Willow asked accusingly, until Tara nudged her. "Ohh, is it the baby?" Xander hadn't meant his words to come out that brash and worry her but he hadn't quite known what to say. He felt like he wasn't doing anything, like he should be helping. But this wasn't his job, he literally wasn't qualified. So he put his energy into explaining properly.

"Yeah," he rubbed the back of his neck, "Anya's waters broke this morning. I feel good, you know, but nervous."

"So the baby's really coming today then?" Willow asked, Tara close at her shoulder, listening to every word. She silently squealed with excitement, which Willow had to calm so she could continue the conversation.

"Yep, today's the day." Xander said definitely, standing up to look for the maternity ward sign again. He figured he could tell Willow to call the others and that it was his turn to help, to be there. Anya would probably kill him if he wasn't.

"Do you want us to come down there, or get you anything? We're not busy." Tara's mind battled a war between finishing her placement applications and going to the hospital to help Xander and Anya, but when it came down to it. She figured babies were more important. And more cute, and basically just better than paperwork in every possible way.

"Maybe come down later, I know Anya will probably want to see you. Show him off to everybody. Can you guys call Buffy and Dawn and well everybody. I want them to know." Xander finished, almost ready to put the phone down when Willow responded.

"It's a boy?"

"Well, I hope so." Willow smiled at that, her best friend, the guy who'd once battled a giant praying mantis who wanted to eat him, that guy was going to be a father. The guy who had one eye. And revived Buffy, and fixed the window panes. The guy who had been her best friend since the first day of kindergarten when she broke the yellow crayon. That guy was going to be a father. And he was so excited about it. She immediately put the phone down and started dialling.

Xander stalked down the hall looking for Anya's ward, he wasn't sure where she'd be. Frankly, he'd been too nervous to ask for a while. So he hung around the door until a nurse came out and he just had to ask, he had to know. "Excuse me, can you tell me where my wife is please? She's- we're having a baby," he stammered, standing firmly, his hands in his pockets. The nurse just pointed down a long hallway and continued on her way without saying anything, which Xander thought was a little weird but he ignored it and headed off.

The white hall seemed to go on forever. Room after room with random numbers in seemingly no order to them presented themselves. He pressed a few of them open but he only found the rooms to be empty or for storage. He could no longer hear anything either, no screaming, yelling, doctors talking, nothing. Just an eeriness that made him feel like he was being watched. Probably just security cameras, he told himself. But he hunched his shoulders over, creeping down the remainder of the hall until he reached a final door. "This must be it," he said to himself, grabbing the handle and pushing the door open. There was Anya, strapped to a bed, screaming, a crazy doctor with mad scientist hair was between her stirruped legs, laughing manically. Xander closed his eye and covered his ears to block the awful noise. This couldn't be right, this just couldn't. What awful demon would-? The lights were flashing and the noise seemed to be piercing his brain, until he opened his eye and found himself still standing outside the door to the maternity ward. Anya laying in a bed on the other side of the doors.

He blinked a few times to reset his half-vision and pushed through the doors. "An, hey. Sorry, I got lost there for a second." He said, moving to Anya's left side and grabbing her hand.

The smiling doctor looked up from the end of the bed and pulled on a new pair of surgical gloves, "don't worry, you're just in time."

"Just in time?" Xander repeated back, he thought Anya was in the early stages of labour. Or at least that's what he'd read, he didn't expect the baby to be coming so soon. "Now? The baby's coming now."

"Yes, your wife is crowning very nicely," the doctor replied before putting her hands on the baby's head to ease it out slowly.

"How long was I asleep for?" Xander muttered to himself, looking around him to see if anyone else was panicking. But Anya just looked up at him, her blonde hair a little stuck to her face, and her cheeks red from exhaustion. She looked like he'd never seen her before, like she was in pain and hating it, but also that she was proud of herself for doing this. He kissed her forehead and looked back at the doctor, who looked very determined and very qualified. So he said, "Anya, I know you can do this. I believe in you. I love you so much."