Title: The Assistant, part 59
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: Merrick didn’t die. AU
Spoilers: season 4
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters.. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Buffy struggled up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with her husband and gratefully lay down upon the bed, not bothering to get under the covers. Her back hurt and she had been suffering little twinges in her abdomen all day. This pregnancy couldn’t end soon enough to please her, she thought tiredly. What was the world coming to when the Slayer had to take a nap after supper?
She fell into a fitful doze and woke only when she had to go to the bathroom. Setting up carefully, she slouched into the small room wondering why she felt so ooky when she’d been resting. She barely made it to the tiled floor when her water broke. Standing in the center of a huge puddle she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Gross.” Mopping the mess up on the floor took only a few minutes and cleaning herself up took another ten. She waddled back into the bedroom, found clean nightclothes, and put them on before going to the closet and retrieving the overnight bag they had packed for her trip to the hospital. She set it at the foot of the bed and decided that she would do some meditation to calm herself before getting everybody all excited. She had heard it could take hours and hours for a first baby to come and she wanted to be calm.
Sitting in a lotus position on the bed she began the deep breathing exercises Giles had taught her preparatory to entering a meditative state. It didn’t take long. She felt her body awareness fade a bit and was able to track the progress of her contractions. They were still minor and not all that painful, more like little shouts for attention, she thought distantly. It was too soon to go to the hospital. It would just make everyone wait in an uncomfortable environment while her body got ready to deliver her child.
Though she wasn’t paying much attention to the time, she was aware that it was passing. She thought Rupert might be coming to bed soon, unless he had gotten wrapped up in research—a distinct possibility. She smiled softly, fondly amused by her husband’s distraction.
The contractions were closer together now, and though she had separated the pain from her true self, she could tell that they were harder, more determined than before. It occurred to her that it might be important to time them. Touching her inner clock, she waited for another wave of pain. Holy Moly! They were less than two minutes apart! She was going to have this baby very soon indeed! She maintained her meditation with difficulty; the surprise had been so great. There was no time to go to the hospital. She didn’t want to have her child in the back seat of the car. Buffy wanted Giles with her in this moment. She let herself slip from the meditation to call him.
“Giles?”
There was no answer so she tried again, louder, more insistent. “Giles! I need you right now!”
There was a moment of silence before he called back. “Buffy? What’s wrong?” She heard his feet on the stairs.
He entered their bedroom. “What is it, love?”
“We’re having a baby!”
He stopped and stared at her, unsure of what she was talking about. “What? Well, of course we are, but not for two weeks.”
“No, I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot sooner than that.. My contractions are less that two minutes apart.”
Giles looked stunned. “No, that’s impossible! Are you sure?”
She grimaced as a wave of pain washed over her body. “Not much doubt in my mind, Rupert.”
“We need to get you to the hospital!”
“No time.” She gasped as another contraction hit.
He ran to her and pulled her into his arms. “What do we need to do?”
“Get the others, we’ll need help.”
He yelled loudly for John to get upstairs right now. They heard the trample of a stampede of feet on the stairs. The bedroom door swung open and the elder Watcher stumbled, panting into the room.
“She’s having the baby, right now!” Rupert bellowed.
It galvanized them. There was a mad scramble as people tried to push into the room.
“We’ve got to get her to the hospital!” Joyce wailed.
“No time, mom. I think I may have meditated a little bit too long and, well, I kinda used up my leeway.” Buffy gasped as another contraction took her.
Strangely, it was Wesley who took control of the situation. “Thomas, go boil a pair of scissors, and some string. Joyce, get one of the new plastic tarps out of the supply box. Rupert, walk Buffy around the room a bit. She needs to move. John, fetch the medicine kit. Everybody hurry!” He moved into the bathroom and washed his hands up to the elbows.
Joyce arrived back with the tarp which he directed her to spread on the bed. No point in getting blood on everything, he told her cheerfully. Buffy gave him a grim look but immediately went back to concentrating on her contractions which were now coming less than a minute apart.
They threw a new sheet over the tarp and helped Buffy lie down. Thomas thoughtfully produced a baseball bat for her to grip since her Slayer strength would crush a mere human’s hand if they tried to hold her. John returned with the medicine kit and Thomas ran back downstairs to retrieve the boiled scissors and string. Wesley sent Giles into the bathroom to wash his hands. The big man didn’t return a moment too soon as Buffy had started bearing down. They modestly covered Buffy with a sheet but left her legs and hips exposed. Wesley motioned everyone but Rupert to stand around the head of the bed, ready to assist if necessary.
Giles felt dizzy as he saw the baby’s head start to push out from Buffy’s body. He watched her give another heave and then the head was clear. She moaned but long exposure to pain had trained her not to scream.. Wesley showed Giles how to catch the baby as the rest of its body shot forth as if jet-propelled. They heard a splintering noise and realized that in her agony, Buffy had literally crushed the bat. Joyce took the broken ends away from her and smoothed back her hair.
Giles held his child while Wesley cleared its air passages. It gave a tiny cry, but soon settled down, snug in its father’s arms. He watched while the younger man tied off the cord, waiting for the pulsing to stop before cutting it. Buffy began a series of minor contractions that expelled the afterbirth. She was soaked with sweat, felt incredibly sore and tired, and wanted to see her baby.
She saw her husband examine the child carefully. “It’s a little girl. Buffy, we have a daughter. She’s absolutely perfect.”
He placed the child in her arms and watched while she performed her own inspection. “She’s perfect,” Buffy echoed, handing the baby back to him and closing her eyes tiredly.
Everyone crowded around and marveled at the new life that hadn’t been there just minutes before. Giles looked at Wesley, respect deeply written on his face. “I can’t thank you enough, Wes. You knew exactly what to do.”
The other man blushed. “I’ve been reading up on the phenomenon just in case. We do live on a Hellmouth, after all.”
They all chuckled and glanced back at Buffy who was now deeply asleep. She had come through like a trooper, but childbirth was still exhausting, no matter if you were the Slayer or not.
Joyce washed her granddaughter, dressed her in one of the newborn outfits they had purchased, and snuggled her into the cradle Giles had assembled earlier that week. She looked so tiny and sweet that it made her realize how large her own son had grown since his birth. She decided that, unless Rupert objected, she’d like to stay for a little while and watch over her daughter.
Giles pulled a chair up near the two beds so he could watch his wife and his child. He was mildly surprised when Joyce pulled up a chair of her own.
“What hostages we give to fate when we love another person, eh, Rupert?”
He nodded his agreement. “Before Buffy came into my life, I had no idea that I could feel like this. I’ve dated, of course, and I’ve been fond of some of the women that I escorted, but never, in all my life did I ever feel for one of them what that tiny woman in the bed makes me feel. And now, there is another. I held that child in my arms and I wanted to protect her from everything.”
Joyce nodded solemnly. “I know exactly what you mean. The really galling part is that we can hardly protect them from anything, really. They still fall down and get hurt. They get their hearts broken. They get a destiny. Nothing we can do about it.”
“I know I’m not your ideal son-in-law, Joyce, but I do love Buffy. Had there been a choice, I would have tried to let her go to a younger man.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “At one time, I thought that would be a good thing, but I see you now—how you are with her—and I know that you two belong together. I’m OK with that now.”
He smiled softly at her. “Thank you, Joyce. It means rather a great deal to me.”
She smiled back at him and changed the subject. “Do you have a name picked out?”
“We’ve toyed with a few ideas, but there always seemed like plenty of time to make up our minds.” He looked slightly dismayed.
“When I named Buffy, I just combined my mom’s name with my husband’s mother’s name. At the time, we had no idea we’d be calling her Buffy.”
“How did that come about, anyway?” He asked curiously.
“When she was about, oh, three or so, she stopped answering to Elizabeth. Absolutely said that wasn’t going to be her name anymore. God knows why. We tried variants—Beth, Liz, Lizzie, Anne, Annie—pretty much every variation you could imagine. Finally, I was reading a biography on Queen Elizabeth and they mentioned that she had been called Buffy as a small child.. I tested it out and it was love at first try.”
“Ironic, that,” he pointed out. “That she’d end up married to an Englishman, I mean.”
“Yeah.” Joyce took one last look at her daughter and peeked at the sleeping baby. “I guess I’ll go to bed. Congratulations, Rupert.”
“Good night, Joyce, and thank you.”
They shared a glance of complete understanding and she left the room. He stayed seated in his chair watching his loved ones rest.