Chapter One Hundred and Fifty One
Little Pushes
San Francisco, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007
Buffy walked through the cemetery in the early morning light. A chill ran through the air despite it being summer, so she wrapped her jacket tighter around her shoulders. She wasn't sure if she patrolling out of habit, or looking for Spike. It was daylight, how was she supposed to do either? Unless Spike had miraculously gained the ability to day-walk, or he'd found the Gem of Amara again. She walked on, past a few headstones that'd seen better days, and a tomb that needed either a good scrubbing, or there really was a family called 'Grh Sa.'
But there could still be demons, demons that were allergic to the sun. Buffy was on her guard, not that there was any real reason. With slayers everywhere these days, the demon count was way down. Also, there was no Hellmouth in San Francisco, nothing drawing them in. She had a stake in her boot anyway, it couldn't help to be too careful.
As she walked further and further into the cemetery, the trees got denser and the headstones became a forest of the dead. The sun barely got through the foliage to penetrate the earth. One unlucky vampire thought it was the dead of night and began to scrap through the soil about his coffin. Scratching over and over at the top of the locked box. Buffy winced as she watched the top soil moving, like a mole was trapped under the surface. But she knew better. She'd been in a box just like that one, she knew how hard it was to claw out of those things. Not that she fell bad for a vamp, it was more a pity that he didn't have a real chance. That thought made her laugh, was she getting soft? Or was she experienced enough to know that even if they had a chance to spar, she would win. She always won.
She leaned against a limestone tomb as she watched the poor vampire crawl onto the surface of his former grave and stand upright for the first time, only to realise he was standing in the sun and turn instantly to dust. The gap between the trees had been enough to kill him. It was pitiful really. Buffy stalked off, out of the cemetery and down the main road towards her apartment. The morning traffic was quiet, and the birdsong had eased off hours ago. Where was everybody? What were they doing? Buffy wondered, she'd left Dawn asleep, so that much wasn't a mystery. But everyone else? It seemed like everyone was busy having lives whilst she was just same old Buffy.
New Sunnydale, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007
"I love you too- AHHH!" Anya found herself yelling as the baby's head descended further, her fingers gripping Xander's hand like a vice. Once the contraction was over her head lolled back against the pillows and she looked up at him. "I can't do this. I change my mind, I don't want a baby after all. It's too much. I can't do it." She said deadly serious. But Xander knew it was just the pain, he (hoped) knew that she wanted this.
"An, you can do this. I believe in you. I know you can." He said, kissing the back of hand just as she started to yell again. This baby was coming quickly, and it was coming now. As the doctor reposition her hands, Anya groaned a little, everything ached, her back, everything below her waist basically felt like it was being ripped apart. Which was not exactly an experience she'd had in her thousand years of living. She'd inflicted this kind of pain hundreds of times, jealous wives making their husbands go through the pain of childhood just to smite them. She understood why now, this was torture.
The doctor pulled the head gently until it was all the way out, a thirty minute process in which Anya was prepared to kill someone just for the pain to end. Doctor Matthews told Xander that screaming and yelling was perfectly natural, really she heard it all the time. But still he was a little worried, he had a right to be. With the head out, the rest of the baby slid out into the waiting doctor's arms. She smiled and grabbed a towel from the side of the bed to wrap him in. "You have a beautiful-" she held the baby up so Anya and Xander could see. "Baby boy! Let me just cut the cord and you can hold him."
Anya let out a heavy breath and looked at Xander who was smiling and gulping with nerves. "A boy An, a baby boy." He looked down at Doctor Matthews had tied and cut the cord with surgical scissors.
"I did it?" Anya breathed out slowly. Looking down at the baby who was being laid on her chest. "We have a baby?" She shook slightly as her hand came down onto the baby's back, ever so gently.
"Yes we do." Xander replied quietly, kissing Anya's forehead. The baby was crying softly, the way babies do when they're first born.
"He's beautiful." Anya said, tiredness falling over her like a spell. Her eyes closing gently as the baby quietened down. The doctor nodded up at Xander and told them she'd give them some time alone, but that she'd be back soon to deliver the afterbirth. He nodded in return and then focussed all his attention on the tiny baby laying on Anya's chest. He- he was here. Their baby. Oh God, now they had to think up names. Anya would probably want something weird and demony. He smiled a little at that, then filled with complete dread and wonder, as all the fear of being a father came back to him. But there was a undertone of happiness, whenever he looked at him, that small little bean, he felt like nothing else mattered anymore.
San Francisco, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007
The phone was ringing. Buffy was standing in her apartment, still in her clothes from last night. Back from her walk in the cemetery, holding a mug of coffee. She hesitated to pick up the ringing machine, but it was long enough for Dawn to run out of her room in pink pyjamas and grab the handset. "Hello? Oh Willow hey," she said far too chirpy for first thing in the morning. Buffy walked over unenthusiastically and perched on Dawn's shoulder. "Oh my God," Dawn reacted, putting the phone to her other shoulder and looking back at Buffy.
"Anya's having the baby," she whispered. "Right okay, yeah we'll come with you, don't leave without us okay?" She finished talking on the phone and then put it back in its cradle. "We gotta go, they're leaving via portal in a few minutes, Willow was just gonna call Giles and Jenny too. Let them know." She said excitedly, running back into her room to get dressed.
"The day's finally here huh," Buffy said to herself, she was nervous for Xander, and in case anything went wrong. But then she thought about it, and remembered the day that her parents brought Dawn home from the hospital. Even if it had been a fabricated memory by a group of monks, she still remembered how she felt when she saw her for the first time. Love. Instant love. And the need to protect her. Xander would be feeling the same. She'd have to be there for him, make sure him and Anya got attention too, not just the baby. But the baby was good too.
She put down her coffee cup and grabbed her keys and her cell phone. Then she waited the five-ten minutes it took Dawn to get ready and then the further two to find her shoes, and then another three for them to finally get out the door. They found Willow and Tara waiting at the end of the hall, impatient looks on their faces.
New Sunnydale, the world without shrimp - June 8th 2007
It'd been a few hours. Willow, Tara, Dawn and Buffy were on their way to the hospital, Giles was in his kitchen drinking tea, Anya was just waking up from a nap in a side room at the hospital. Xander was just bringing her a cup of ice chips. The baby was sleeping too, soundo in the nursery. Xander walked into the room and put down the cup, "got your ice chips An." He said, sliding onto the bed beside her and stroking her hair as she came round.
"Ooh ice chips." She replied softly, her head nudging against his arm. She took a little sip from the cup and happily chewed away on her ice. Despite the pain being immeasurable, the pain relief and hormones had kicked in so she was in a deep, spacey mood, perfect for talking in an overly happy tone.
"On the way back from the ice machine, I started thinking about names." Xander said, chomping on the end of a cereal bar he'd got from the vending machine. "I was thinking about Jack, nice normal name you know. Strong name." He kept chewing, hoping she'd agree with him. He wanted his son to be well liked, not picked on because he had a weird name.
"Yeah I like Jack," she replied, getting his hopes up. But then she continued, "but maybe his middle name could be something demony. I have to give tribute to my past Xander, I don't have a family name to give him, frankly I don't remember them much." Anya waffled on, "something cool, something I heard once in a bar like Mydret, or Xolvan. No Xolvan's better 'cause of the 'X' - 'X' like Xander." She pointed to him like it was the most obvious thing in the world. But at the end of the day, he had to agree. He had to let her have her way because they were in this together. He could maybe just not tell people he had a middle name. Then he wondered what Willow would think.
When the nurse brought Jack back from the nursery and put him in Anya's arms, he looked down and knew that he couldn't deny her. A baby just slotted into her arms like he was supposed to be there, like he'd been missing their entire lives. Xander bent down, letting him wrap his little finger with his whole fist. This. This was it, the moment he felt like a father. He knew he was responsible for this little life. His son. As he smiled and held his family against him, he realised, he had everything he'd ever wanted in this room.
Meanwhile, Anya had started on the baby talk. "You are just the cutest baby ever," she said, "yes you are." Xander laughed because he had no idea where she'd picked this up from, but that mystery was solved pretty quickly. She looked up at him completely seriously, "what? You think I went a thousand years without holding a baby, do you know how many women I helped get vengeance? Quite a few of them had new babies, some they wanted me to babysit." She said pointedly, then went back to stroking baby Jack's dark hair like it was the softest, most delicate material in the world.
"I never doubted you Anya. You're holding him perfectly, but can I have a go now?" He replied.
"Fine, but we do get to keep him, you know?" She retorted, gently handing Jack over and watching him nestle against Xander's body, soundly sleeping through the whole ordeal of moving. Xander rolled his eyes and was then immensely distracted by the way Jack was sucking the air, his perfect round lips, making little kisses into the air. The gang were going to love him.
