Sub-title: Secret Santa for Lisa & Salatina
Rating: Let's say R for language
Spoilers: Probably anything and everything…definitely S3/6 but AU…and as I don't see S3/6 until 10/01/02 there will be glaring errors the size of small countries…I will probably be so far off canon I will need a Routemaster to find my way back!!!
Distribution: Take it…
Feedback: Pretty please…this was such hard work (but in the end fun) and is totally unbetaed
AN's: OK guys…I owe you two a HUGE apology…I have been trying to write your challenges since I got them in November and they just wouldn't work…everything I put down on paper sucked harder than a Dustbuster. I was beginning to panic; sure I wouldn't be able to do anything with them (you guys really threw me a curve ball!). My panic reached mountainous proportions the other day and so I popped by the Watercooler and begged for help. I gave Dee a need for an Irish Cream Latte (and a migraine), but NakedWesley stepped up to the plate and gave me a suggestion…a suggestion that has resulted in this. So I am really sorry that you aren't getting your challenges separate and exactly how you asked for them, but I hope this will be OK and that you will forgive me.
Dedication: NakedWesley for the much needed virtual slap in the face…panic is so not an attractive look on me!!!

Buffy hated being pregnant. She'd thought that the pinnacle of her hate was not being able to have a 'normal' life (whatever one of those was), but this hate was bigger than that and then some.

Struggling to get her large frame out of the collapsing passenger seat of the De Soto, she once again cursed whatever madness had taken hold of her when she had slept with Angel at their 'hey I'm alive again' meeting all those months back. There had been no risk to his soul, both their emotions too fucked up to ever achieve perfect happiness, but they had sure managed to achieve something else!

Pregnancy also appeared to be affecting her sanity. Only the other week she'd had the most curious of Slayer dreams (or at least she hoped that was what it was). Her seventeen year old self had been sitting on her bed having a conversation with her nineteen year old self about Riley of all things. They had then progressed onto Acathla and the whole 'I'm gonna send the world to Hell' kick that Angelus had been on at the same time. Nineteen was trying to warn seventeen about the curse and seventeen was trying to make nineteen see that Riley was about as much good for her as twenty two pints of beer followed by a curry (whilst asking a lot of awkward questions about a certain bite mark). Luckily Dawn had woken her up before it had turned into Slayer fisticuffs; although she would like to have seen who'd won that battle.

Standing so her back rested on the door of the De Soto, she cursed having to make the two hour drive to LA just to go to Lamaze so that none of Sunnydale's demonic population would see her and find out that it was really the Buffybot who was doing the slaying again.

"You ready Pet?"

Buffy came out of her daydream to find Spike standing in front of her holding out his arm. She took it, biting back a giggle. Spike however noticed.

"What's so funny Luv?"

"Going to Lamaze with a vampire to be taught how to breathe in labor. Even you have to see the irony in that."

"I can bloody breathe with the best of them, I just don't have to." He replied indignantly. This time she let the laughter come, and soon he joined her. Together they walked into the class…

For the hundredth time since Darla had turned up at the Hyperion looking as if she had swallowed a fully inflated beach ball Angel sighed resignedly to himself. Here he was looking at conclusive proof that, whether you were twenty, forty, or over two hundred and forty, if you were male and thought with your dick you usually ended up in big trouble.

Darla was expecting his baby. That statement alone had caused him to brood for twenty-four hours straight. Wesley then finding a prophecy saying that the child she was carrying was the Child of Darkness had extended that brooding cycle to a week. It really seemed like the PTB's had it in for him.

So here he was, at a Lamaze class with Darla (at her insistence that they do things properly, although neither of them needed to breathe and he was sure as hell this baby wasn't going to be delivered in a hospital).

"Oh what a pleasant surprise. It's the cheerleader and William the Bloody Useless."

Angel came out of his melancholy (luckily before it became another brood fest or it may have taken forever) and followed Darla's gaze. Sure enough, there was Buffy with Spike. He did a double take. There was Buffy with Spike and she was pregnant. His mouth gaped open in surprise…

"What the hell is Peaches doing here? Wait a minute, isn't that his supposedly dearly departed Sire he's with? Looks more pregnant that departed to me."

Buffy froze to the spot. Angel and Darla? Here? Darla pregnant? Her blood pressure began to rise through the roof, but Spike put his hands on her shoulders and guided her towards a mat at the far end of the room, away from the source of her discomfort…

Angel was just about to go over when the door opened and in breezed the Lamaze coach. Angel sighed again. Could things really get any worse?

"Hi. I'm Riley and I'm your new Lamaze coach. Unfortunately your previous coach met with an unfortunate accident involving a barbecue fork that resulted in fatal neck trauma. Any questions? Good, let's get started."

Buffy rubbed her forehead; she was getting a migraine. She had believed her life couldn't possibly get any worse, yet it just had, in glorious Technicolor with surround sound. There, right in front of her eyes, stood her ex, dressed in Star Wars jogging bottoms and an 'I Luv Oregon' sweatshirt.

"OK, now if your birth partner would like to hold your focus object in front of you we shall start concentrating and breeeeeeeeathe."

Spike held Mr. Pointy so that Buffy could see it. What he'd rather do was ram it through Riley's chest, but he bit back the desire, even though the satisfaction he would gain would make the skull shattering pain he would suffer afterwards worth it. Luckily enough, Riley seemed to be his usual, totally clueless self, and had failed to notice that he had three vampires and a Slayer in his class. Spike doubted Riley would have noticed had they been the only ones in the room…

Angel held Darla's focus object, a large stuffed lizard, as he helped her through her breathing exercises. All the while his mind wandered as to what Buffy was doing here, why she was with Spike, and who had made her pregnant.

His attention was brought firmly back to Darla when she let out an ear splitting yell and nearly shattered all the bones in his right hand.

"Do we have a problem over there people?" Riley asked.

Darla replied through gritted teeth, "Yes we have a problem you rabbit faced half-wit. I'm in bloody labor."

A loud whisper ran round the room.

"Wonderful, wonderful. I was going to show a video of a birth later but now we can all see one first hand. If you'd all like to gather round."

"What am I, a fucking spectator sport???"

Riley patted Darla on the head condescendingly, "There there my dear, no need to get upset. Your husband is here to help you and so am I…"

(Three hours later)

"Drifting somewhere in the vast…"

"Angel, if he doesn't stop singing that bloody song I am going to break his neck."

Angel just smiled down at Darla and wiped her brow…

"Is this what you're going to put me through Luv?" Spike asked Buffy.

"No." She watched the relief spread over his face, "With me it'll be much much worse…"

(And another three hours)

"GET ME A STAKE…I WANT A BLOODY STAKE!!!"

"Now then dear, I really don't think you should be eating during such an advanced stage of labor." Riley simpered sweetly. Darla ignored him for the moron he was.

"Cheerleader, give me that stake."

Buffy looked at Darla, then at Mr. Pointy, "What, this one?"

"Can you see any other stakes in here Fluffy? Give it to me NOW."

Buffy dangled Mr. Pointy in front of Darla's nose, only to have it snatched out of her hand. She watched in amazement as Darla plunged it into her heart. An infant's cry brought her out of her daze. There, lying on the mat, covered in his mother's ashes, was a perfect baby boy.

"I want a birth like that." Spike heard a woman to his right mutter under her breath. To his left he heard a gentle thud, and when he looked he saw Riley, face down on the floor in a dead faint.

Buffy knelt down next to Angel, who appeared to be in shock. Taking off her hooded sweatshirt she wrapped the baby in it and cradled him in her arms.

"Is he yours?" she asked softly. He just nodded in response. "So is the one I'm expecting."

Angel looked at her confused. Gently she placed his hand on her distended belly. "This is also your child."

"Guess that explains the whole Child of Darkness/Child of Light prophecy thing Giles emailed you." Spike commented.

"Do you want to hold him?" Buffy offered the infant she was cradling to Angel but he shook his head. "Why?"

"I can't get attached to him. I can't let a Child of Darkness live. I can't be responsible for the havoc him living will cause."

"Oh bloody hell, listen to the martyr! What makes you think he's going to cause havoc?"

"Spike shush." Buffy glared at him.

"But Peaches has got it all wrong. Who translated your copy of the prophecy? Cordelia???"

"SPIKE!" This time he shut up, scuffing his toe on the floor and looking suitable chastised.

"Angel, look at me."

He didn't move. Buffy placed her free hand under his chin and raised his head until their eyes were level.

"Your son isn't evil."

"But the prophecy.."

"You are a vampire. Darla was a vampire. Both of you are creatures who are forced to walk in darkness due to your nature. I am human; I can walk in the light. It's not a prophecy about good an evil, it's a prophecy about a vampire with a soul who will father two children, one mother will be of the light and one will be of the darkness."

"That's what I was trying to bloody tell you before I was so rudely interrupted." Spike grumbled whilst pulling on a loose thread that was hanging from his black t-shirt. Buffy ignored him and instead handed Angel the precious bundle she was cradling.

"Angel, meet your son."

Send feedback to Shirlz

Back to the Fanfiction Archive