Chapter 1

“So!  What?  Watcher duties now include pimping me out?” the furious slayer asked as she glared daggers first at her red-faced watcher and then at the blonde vampire chained to the chair.

With a weary sigh, Giles turned to his frantic slayer; taking off his glasses to give them a thorough polishing, he tried once more to pierce the cloud of denial with which she had surrounded herself in order to explain the situation to her. “Buffy, do you think there is one thing about this situation that I like? I have explored every possible avenue, and this is the only solution available. In order to prevent the world from being swallowed whole and pulled into a hell dimension beyond your worst possible imaginings, you must be pregnant by a master vampire at the time you destroy the idol. There is a very specific and non-negotiable order of events required to stop this apocalypse, of which this pregnancy is an integral part.”

Buffy simply could not believe what she was hearing.  It was bad enough that she was the ‘Chosen One,' which was really just a fancy way of saying that she was never going to have a normal life—she would never grow up or get married or have kids. What she was going to get instead of a normal life was a load of heartache and an early death; except that now, apparently, she could add impregnated by Spike to that list as well. “So I have to have Bleach Boy here's baby in order to save the world?! Never mind that I'm only seventeen and will be an unwed mother on top of being the Slayer!  And, oh my god, Mom—she will just flip. There has to be another way, Giles… there just has to be. Please… you have to find it!”  She turned moist terrified eyes on her watcher, clinging to the hope that he would somehow manage to save her and temporarily disregarding the fact that he was the very person who was insisting that she go through with this nightmare in the first place.

“Buffy, I assure you that after the apocalypse is averted we will take the necessary steps to rid you of such an abomination. No one would ever expect you to...”

“Oi! That's my kid you are talking about. ‘s bad enough you tell me I've got to get the bloody slayer up the duff in the first place.  Then you wanna just kill the baby when you're done with it, and you have the cheek to call me evil?” Spike grumbled.

Buffy slumped to the couch and buried her face miserably in her hands, muttering quietly to herself. “This just is so not happening.”

The two men in the room stared helplessly at the slayer as her shoulders shook with quiet sobs. After some time, she collected herself a bit and wiped the tears from her face as she turned pleading red-rimmed eyes on her watcher. “This must be some sort of massive cosmic joke, you know?  I sleep with one vampire—the one I love—and he turns all evil and gets hell-bent on destroying the world. Now you tell me that in order to stop him I have to sleep with another vampire—an evil one—and one I loathe?! Giles, tell me this is just an awful dream… please .”

Giles could not recall a time when he had actively hated his duties as a Council Watcher.  The previous year, when he had seen the prophecy in the Codex and knew with certainty that his slayer was going to die, he had been both saddened and angry at the situation and had been determined to prevent her death, even had it meant giving up his own life to do so. At this moment, however, he was asking this young girl to not only put her life on the line for the sake of humanity, as she had done every night since she had been called but to have intercourse with a vicious master vampire who actively sought out and killed slayers, and to become pregnant by that selfsame vampire.  As if that were not enough, once all that had been accomplished, he would then have to ask her to risk her life once more in a fight with yet another master vampire, one who wore the body and the face of the man she loved, in order to ritually destroy a stone idol before it could unleash hell on earth. Yes, today, he truly detested being a watcher! “Buffy…”

“There's no soddin' way. I won't do it. I refuse, and you can't bloody make me. Now, let me go or stake me,” Spike raged as he struggled weakly against the chains binding him in place.

“I vote for staking,” Buffy agreed, perking up for the first time in hours. Spike slayage would definitely be of the good!

“Spike, has it occurred to you that if the world is destroyed, then by the same token so shall you and Drusilla be ended?” Giles was trying to be reasonable, really he was, but he had been at this for hours and his head was killing him. A good scotch and some peace and quiet were what he needed. What he did not need was a vampire—albeit a weak and drugged one—sitting in his living room while he did his best to arrange for the child that he loved like a daughter and said evil and incredibly annoying vampire to have sex in order to save the world. “Don't you think it would be in your best interest, as well as ours, for you to cooperate?”

“You tell me why I should, Watcher. You bloody shot me with some sort of elephant tranquilizer and chained me up in here.  Did you come to me and ask for help?  No!  Your grand plan was just ‘kidnap the vampire and use him to impregnate the Slayer.' An' after the deed is done—then what, hey? You stake me? What happens to old Spikey when you no longer need him for stud duties?”

“Spike, don't be ridiculous. We'd never … Well, in this extraordinary case we wouldn't… What I mean to say is, of course you will be free to go once Buffy is pregnant and Acathla has been defeated.”

“He will?” Buffy stared in quizzical amazement at her Watcher. “We're just gonna let him go? You know, to kill people and… well… kill more people,” she finished with a pout, her argument faltering as she realised how petulant she sounded.

“Buffy, how could we in all good conscience ask Spike to help us and then stake him when he does?” He turned to fix his gaze once more upon the incapacitated vampire. “No, if Spike will agree to help us defeat Angelus and Acathala he may leave and take Drusilla with him. However,” he added as his eyes narrowed and jaw set, the quiet librarian momentarily replaced by the far deadlier persona of his long ago youth, “if either Spike or Drusilla set foot in Sunnydale again, they will be hunted down and exterminated. This I promise.”

Spike glared at the tweed-clad wanker with impotent fury.  If his bloody legs worked and he could just get out of these chains, he would merrily rip the bastard's throat out for daring to speak to him in that way. As it was, his only weapon was his tongue, and so he employed it eagerly, looking forward to the stupid git's humiliation when he realised what a complete idiot he had been. “There's jus' one last thing ‘bout this plan of yours that doesn't make a bleedin' bit of sense, Watcher. Vampire, here. You know, undead. As in not alive .  I can't get your Slayer pregnant for you, so you'd best find some other patsy to do the deed.”

“Yes, well, I am quite aware of your condition, Spike. And while ordinarily what you say is true, according to my research if you… well, that is to say… a vampire, or at least a master vampire who claims a Slayer would then be able to…”

“What?! You're off your bleedin rocker if you think I'm gonna claim her. Do you have any idea what you are asking? What a claim involves?”

“I am well aware of the process of the ritual, yes—and I might add that if you take one drop more of her blood than you require you will be begging for me to dust you. Do I make myself completely clear?”

“I'm not talking ‘bout the bloody ritual, you stupid git. A claim is sacred—not something you do with just anyone—and it's for life. It would bind us together in a far more permanent way than human marriage does. There's no annulment, no divorce, no way out.  No way I could leave her if I'd claimed her, an' even if I could there'd be no way she'd let me. ‘S not gonna happen, Watcher. No way. I love Dru, and I am NOT claiming the Slayer. An' I wouldn't claim her even if I didn't have Dru.  End of story.”

“Then Drusilla will die.” Giles held the furious vampire's gaze, neither wavering for some time, before Spike finally growled in surrender.

“Don't say I didn't bloody warn you. But you make damned sure the girl knows what she's getting herself into. The bond a mating creates is unbreakable ‘cept by death, and you did say I do what you ask an' I get out of this un-dusted, right?” Spike raised his left eyebrow questioningly, allowing only the faintest trace of the doubt he was feeling to enter his voice.  He was far too accomplished of a predator to make a novice mistake like showing fear; fear was a weakness that could be used against him, and because of the sodding tranqs the Watcher was already up one weakness too many. There was no doubt in Spike's mind after his recent battle of wills with the pompous git, that this Watcher would use any weapon available to him in order to manipulate others into doing his bidding.

“‘The girl' is sitting right here, you know,” Buffy groused, glaring once more at the two men who seemed intent on settling this without so much as consulting her. Although, to be fair, Spike seemed more concerned with her interests than Giles did. But still—hello? Sitting right here. Why did they have to talk about her like she wasn't even there? Men!

“Buffy, I know that you are upset about this, and rightly so. However, I do hope you can see that despite the abhorrent nature of the task you are being asked to perform, I would not ask it of you unless the need was absolutely dire.” Giles knelt on the floor in front of his obviously distressed charge and took her hands gently in his. “I hate to have to ask this of you… surely you do know that?” At her reluctant nod, he continued. “It is the only possible way to save the world, Buffy. I know that this is an enormous weight to lay upon your shoulders, but unfortunately, that is the just the way that it is.” Giles watched as a tear tracked slowly down the girl's face, her misery evident in every line as she steeled herself to do the duty that had been placed by fate on her tiny shoulders.

“Alright,” she agreed, the word spoken in a grief-filled whisper.

tbc