Next Life by Ariel Dawn
Summary: Sequel to Another Life, third in the Rest of Our Lives series. Fourteen years after Another Life, the Scoobie gang is together again to celebrate the achievement of their next generation.
Categories: Serial Fics Characters: None
Genres: None
Warnings: Adult Language
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 7 Completed: No Word count: 18194 Read: 12501 Published: 05/13/2007 Updated: 12/06/2008

1. 2021 by Ariel Dawn

2. Angry Teenager by Ariel Dawn

3. Potential by Ariel Dawn

4. Interpretation by Ariel Dawn

5. Little Witch by Ariel Dawn

6. Vampires by Ariel Dawn

7. Ice cream by Ariel Dawn

2021 by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.
Thanks to BTL for the betaing!
Previous installments of this series: The Rest of our lives and Another Life
Chapter 1: 2021

Buffy Graves looked over at the assembled crew in her back yard. She had been married in this yard and now amidst the swing set, barbeque and patio furniture, things that Buffy had never really expected to ever own, her friends and family were once more gathered to celebrate another event of significance.

Richard, Faith’s little boy, not so little anymore, was graduating from high school. This was the first time in years that the whole Scooby gang was together in one location for any length of time. Buffy suspected that chaos was going on at the Watcher’s Council because so many of the decision makers were currently eating ice cream cones in her backyard.

Richard’s sister, Nikki, was scooping out the frozen desert, while Bianca, Buffy’s first born, was doling out sprinkles. The two girls were only a year apart in their ages but it seemed like they were years apart; Nikki had a wisdom about her that Bianca didn’t have. Maybe it came from being an orphan or maybe it was just Nikki’s way. Bianca had just sneaked through grade nine and was about to find herself enrolled in summer school, her father’s idea.

Spike was evil. It came with the vampire package. Spike, at that moment, was locked away in the house, waiting for the sun to go down, and keeping his youngest child occupied.

Rowan Tara Graves was four years old and the spitting image of her aunt Dawn. The littlest Graves was going to kindergarten in the fall and was very excited about being a big girl. Ten years younger than her sister, she kept not only Spike and Buffy young, but was probably another reason for Nikki being so mature for her age, and for Bianca’s inclination to stay a child.

Willow, now an important member of the Bath coven, was reclining on Buffy’s patio lounger talking to Dawn, a glass of root beer in her hand. Willow and Oz had come together, bringing their children, TJ, and Dan with them. They weren’t married, and they certainly weren’t monogamous, but whatever arrangement they had seemed to work for them.

Tara Jennifer, or TJ as everyone called her, was in no way like her namesake. She was a tomboy through and through. She was thirteen and Bianca had turned her nose up at the boyish antics the moment she had seen her cousin. Dan was nine and was playing some sort of action figure game with Dawn’s boys and Andrew’s son.

Dawn and Xander Harris, both watchers, and their two sons, Jesse and Will had arrived with massive gifts and even more massive hugs. Buffy had been over to see Jesse and Will’s births, but slaying had kept her in Cleveland. Buffy missed her sister.

Despite numerous protests, bribery and pleading, Andrew Wells was still the watcher assigned to Cleveland. Years of whining had done little to endear Andrew to the Slayer. He was part of them now, despite how much they wanted to wring his neck every once in a while. He’d actually moved out of the attic and was living across town with a very nice woman, who had actually accepted his proposal of marriage. Andrew and Maggie were frequent guests at Buffy and Spike’s house and Jon, their son, was almost as whiney as Andrew.

Giles and Anya had come, too, bringing with them their two hellions, Eddie and Kristina (spelt with a K) . Though Anya was still a full fledged demon, neither Eddie or Kristina (spelt with a K) showed any outward signs of having demon heritage. And it wasn’t like Anya hid the fact that she was a demon. She was forever teleporting back and forth for some watcher related crisis, or the occasional vengeance wish. Just as long as her husband didn’t find out about it. There were some down sides to being married to the head watcher.

The head watcher in question stepped up beside his slayer and offered her a glass of iced tea. Buffy took it without hesitation and leaned into Giles’ shoulder a moment, silently expressing her love for the man she’d thought of as a father her entire adult life. He was getting older, the grey around his temples had spread and he was now very much the distinguished older gentleman.

And he didn’t seem the slightest bit worried that his wife still looked twenty two years old. Of course, anyone that knew the couple really well knew that Anya had over a thousand years on her husband.

“I didn’t come just for Richard’s graduation, Buffy,” said Giles taking a sip from his own glass of ice tea. “There is some watcher’s business that needs to be taken care of while I’m here.”

Buffy turned and looked at the head watcher with a start. “Are you taking Andrew to England? Please tell me you are taking Andrew to England,” Buffy pleaded. This had been the constant request the Slayer had made of her watcher each time they spoke.

“No, I’m not. I can’t stand him either, and I have more pull than you do,” he gloated, not for the first time.

A growl rumbled from Buffy’s throat before she recovered. “What then?”

“This isn’t the most appropriate time,” he admitted. “When the children are asleep perhaps?”

“And the teenagers have gone out with their friends?” asked Buffy, ever the wise mother. “You’re a big tease, you know that Giles?”

“Occasionally my wife tells me that,” he replied.

“Eww, bad mental images!” cringed Buffy acting like she was seventeen again. Of course, she didn’t look much older than that.

“And they say that it’s Anya that has the dirty mind,” Giles commented.

“I can’t help it, I’m married to Mr. Innuendo,” Buffy retorted.

“And you seem to be very happy,” noted Giles.

“Ecstatically,” Buffy sighed. “Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or rather the stork. I’ve still got all those envelopes in my night stand drawer, just waiting for Spike’s little guys to get all mystical.”

There was a thump, and the youngest product of those mystically undead but motile swimmers pressed her nose against the glass of the den and waved.

“Can I come out, Mommy?” Rowan asked sweetly. “Bored now.”

“Do you have on your sunscreen?” Buffy asked the four year old.

Rowan shook her head.

“Then you can’t come out. Your daddy can’t come out with out his sunscreen, and neither can you.”

Rowan frowned and pouted, running back away from the window, and into some sort of trouble, causing Spike to yell ‘oy’ from wherever he was in the house.

“She’s going through a no sunscreen phase,” Buffy explained. “What I’m waiting for is for her to clue in about what Spike’s sunscreen is and come out with SPF blanket.”

“A minor inconvenience when her father is a vampire,” Giles responded.

“I’m still waiting for the major inconvenience to happen. You’d think after fifteen years of being parents, something would have come up that would have been one of those, wish I’d married not a vampire, moments. But nope, not a one. Luckiest woman in the world,” Buffy concluded.

“No kidding,” mentioned Dawn from behind her sister, tugging a defiant Will Harris behind her, his mouth full of dirt. “You let me know when that non aging thing wears off, ‘kay? In the mean time…” Dawn waved her hand at her son and shook her head before heading into the house.

Dawn opened the French doors to the den and out ran Rowan, screaming bloody murder, straight into her Aunt Willow’s arms.

“What happened?” Willow asked the little girl, staring into her blue eyes.

“Sunscreen,” Rowan responded.

Willow made a face for a moment. “You don’t smell like sunscreen. I don’t think you have any on.”

Rowan shook her head and smiled evilly.

“You’d better watch it, little tree,” noted Willow with a gleam in her eye. “Your mommy and daddy are going to be mad. Not worth it over something so little as sunscreen. Wait for something bigger. ‘Kay?”

“Okay, big tree,” Rowan said back, wiggling out of Willow’s arms and back into the house, prim and proper.

“Oh, she’s not dramatic at all,” came Xander’s voice, holding a mug of beer in his hand.

“Just be glad that you didn’t have any Summers girls, whelp!” shouted Spike from inside the house.

“I married one!” Xander shouted back.

“Ya, well I’ve got three, and nine more on the way!”

“You got screwed man!” Xander laughed.

And then Dawn came out of the house and whapped her husband on the head.
_________________________
Richard had left once the family festivities were over. He left with his brand new graduation gift sports car to meet up with some friends. He only had a few more weeks before he would move to England. When Dawn and Xander flew back with their brood, he was going with them. He’d be attending Oxford in the fall, just one more step to becoming a watcher.

Dawn was just happy to get a babysitter she didn’t have to pay.

Andrew, his wife Maggie, and their son Jon left for their own house around 8 pm.

Bedtime in the Graves household was quite the event with the whole family around. Rowan collapsed in her father’s arms, followed by Will in Dawn’s during Mary Poppins, the only movie the whole crew could agree to.

Bianca had wanted to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, ‘cause that Johnny Depp guy was just so dreamy when he was young.

One by one the children filtered upstairs or down to their respective sleeping quarters, leaving the adults to retire to the living room for tea, coffee, and blood.

“So what is so important that you had to tease me earlier Giles?” asked Buffy when she was sure that Nikki and Bianca, the last ones upstairs to get ready for bed, were safely in their rooms.

“It concerns, Nikki,” Giles stated. “She is fifteen.”

“Yes, you sent her a birthday card…” Buffy responded, clearly not getting what Giles was saying.

Giles looked at his fellow watchers with some trepidation.

“Just say it, Giles,” ordered Dawn, leaning against her husband.

“Slayers are usually called at fifteen…” Giles started again.

“But I’m the slayer, the only slayer, can’t be another slayer till I die. And I don’t die until Ariel…not for a good long time.”

“Oh good grief,” Dawn muttered. “Nikki’s a potential.”

“Very tactful sweetie,” noted Xander.

“Tact shamact,” Dawn responded annoyed. “What Giles is trying to say without upsetting you is that Nikki is a potential and that we want to take her to London to be trained. With a watcher, one on one, for a year or two.”

“Hey, whoa, be kind rewind,” stammered the slayer, standing up from her spot on the couch. “Huh?”

“It’s true, Buffy, she’s a potential, I did the spell myself,” added Willow.

“No, I get that. Nikki’s a potential. I’ve known that for years,” Buffy answered. “Why does she need to be taken to London? Why can’t you send a watcher here to train her? Oooh, you can make Andrew her watcher, send me someone else. No wait, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

“You knew that Nikki was a potential?” Xander asked.

“Since when?” Dawn demanded.

“Ariel told me, long before Nikki was even born. I wasn’t trained in England, why does Nikki have to go?” Buffy asked the watchers in the room.

“You didn’t get proper training ‘cause we screwed up,” Xander explained, speaking on behalf of the Watcher’s Council. “When he did find you, it was too late, you’d already been called.”

“So you want me to give up Nikki to become the newer version of Kendra, girl with no last name?” Buffy protested, her voice raising to uncomfortable levels considering there were sleeping children in the house.

“No, that’s not it at all,” Dawn cautioned. “Nikki will be given the choice. She can train here with you, and we’d send a watcher for her. But Buffy, wouldn’t you rather have her trained somewhere not hellmouthy? Somewhere she’d be safe?”

“There you go with that smart thing again,” said Buffy capitulating.

“How long are we talkin’?” asked Spike. “Nikki’s gotta finish her education. She’s not going to be the Slayer, she’s gotta have something to fall back on.”

“A year, year and a half,” stated Xander.

“And she’ll be tutored,” added Dawn. “She won’t miss anything. I swear.”

“Fine,” huffed Buffy. “But you’ve got to convince her to go.”

“Bloody well better do a better job then what happened here,” added Spike.

“I vote Dawn does all the talking,” piped up Willow.
_________________________
Buffy waited patiently in the kitchen as Dawn talked to Nikki in the living room. She’d done the dishes, wiped down all the surfaces, and was at present thinking about tackling the inside of the fridge if they didn’t hurry it up in there.

The Slayer stared at the fridge and the prophecy that was still there, held in place by a magnet in the shape of a cow, a souvenir from when Ricky went to the Bahamas with his high school band two springs ago.

Blood of light, Blood of dark,
Blood of Blood,
Blood spilt to cover up the evils of blood’s evil,
Undercover of darkness blood is hidden,
Three times blood is split, three times evil rises,
Blood of light, Blood of dark,
Cycle begins anew.


She knew it by heart now. In fact, all of them did. That’s what happened when something was on the fridge door for that long. It even got moved to the new fridge when the last one died.

Buffy still had no clue what it meant. No one did. Except that she was the ‘Blood of Light’ and Spike was ‘Blood of Dark’. But it was this prophecy that held her immortality in check.

“I’m not going,” Nikki’s voice resonated in the kitchen, stirring Buffy’s attention from the prophecy to the fifteen year old.

“I don’t blame you,” Buffy answered back. “That was my first reaction too.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?” Nikki asked. “If you knew.”

Buffy turned to face her adopted daughter. “I didn’t want you to feel limited. This doesn’t change what you are or who you are Nikki,” Buffy continued. “You aren’t the Slayer. And unless this prophecy happens within your lifetime, which I doubt, you won’t ever be the Slayer.”

“Then why do they want to train me?”

“It makes them feel useful. Even with all the rebuilding, and Giles swearing up and down that it’s a new and improved council, with scrubbing action, they are still going to prepare for the worst, and they are still going to want to have fingers in all the pies.”

“Can I be the blueberry flavoured one?”

“You can be the Nikki flavoured one. If you really don’t want to do this, that’s fine, we can stand firm. I am Dawn’s older sister you know, I can stand my ground. Truth is, though, that they want to train you, and the Council, no matter who is running it, tends to do what they want anyway. That’s why Andrew is still here. No one in England can stand him. They’ll send you a watcher to train you here. This is the hellmouth. You could die here.”

“I could die in England.”

“Much less likely. And you’ll have all those watchers, and Willow, and a whole coven protecting you.”

“Yes, but here I’d have you and Da,” countered Nikki.

“And a hellmouth, and countless demons who would want you for your blood.”

“I’ve always had demons after me for my blood. Daughter of a slayer here.”

“You’ve got me there.”

“It would be nice to meet new people. Aunt Dawn said that there were at least four other potentials already in training at council HQ. I’d be the only one who’s actually seen a real demon.”

Buffy nodded her head, a sad smile gracing her features.

“I’m sure you’d be really popular because of it too.”

Nikki walked over, gave Buffy a hug, and then headed back towards the living room. She’d made her choice. Buffy knew how it was. The chosen couldn’t help it. That was why she was still here in Cleveland, still slaying night after night. That was why Faith kept slaying even though she wasn’t a slayer anymore.

It’s what cost Faith and Kennedy their lives.

It’s what was going to cost Nikki hers.
_________________________
Tbc…
Angry Teenager by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.

Author’s note: Thanks to the lovely Bloodytearsoflife for the beta.
Chapter 2: Angry Teenager

Of all the people affected by Nikki and Ricky’s departure, Bianca took it the hardest.

But not the way Buffy expected.

The blonde fourteen year old, spitting image of her mother, fell into the very angry, very destructive, not talking mood that Buffy herself was very familiar with, having spent most of her parent’s divorce like that.

As Nikki packed and Buffy paced, Bianca stormed, refusing to address whatever it was that was bothering her.

Everyone tired to talk to her, but she wouldn’t open up. Completely not open Bianca.

“You know that just because Nikki is a potential slayer doesn’t mean we don’t love you any less,” tried Willow over frappacinos. Well, Willow had a frappacino, Bianca was coerced into a non caffeinated iced beverage.

Bianca sipped her drink loudly, refusing to look the witch in the eye. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“If you talk about it, you won’t be so cranky. A cranky Bianca is no one’s friend. Ooh, is it ‘cause you are losing a friend?”

“She’s going to come back. Nikki told me she’s going to come back,” Bianca responded.

“Well I’m tapped,” Willow said admitting defeat.

“What? That’s it?” Bianca asked. “I’m not even done with my iced beverage. You really aren’t ready for teenagers.”

“TJ’s only thirteen. I guess I have a bunch of stuff to learn. Experience, I lack it.”

“You could just go poof and be spectacular witchy aunty Willow with the knowledge.”

“Ya, I could but that would be misusing the whole power thing. Hey, I could try again. What‘s wrong?” Willow asked again.

“You think that just because you ask the same question twice I’m going to tell all? Besides you’ll just get mad,” Bianca said shaking her head.

“And why would I do that?” Willow asked, concerned.

“’Cause you are a special one, you are a witch.”

The next one to try was Dawn. There were still three days to go before the Harris’, Nikki, and Ricky left for England. No one wanted Bianca to let her friend leave without speaking to her about whatever it was that was bothering her.

“Nikki told me that you won’t talk to her,” stated Dawn bluntly. “What’s going on?”

Bianca looked up from drying the dinner dishes with a groan. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?” the watcher asked, flicking her long brown hair behind her shoulder and picking up another dish towel to help out.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Would Nikki understand? ‘Cause, hey, she’s the one you need to talk to.”

“I don’t know. She’ll just get mad.”

“Why?” Dawn prodded. “Why will she get mad?”

“She won’t understand.”
_________________________
“I think detached mom should step in,” offered Dawn to Buffy the next morning. “Everyone else has already tried.”

“Everyone else being you and Willow,” Buffy answered.

“Anya doesn’t think there is a problem. Gotta wonder who’s doing the parenting in that family.”

“I think Anya does lots of the parent thing. Kristina’s just inherited her sense of blunt from her mother. I don’t think that’s a family that’s going to have communication issues.”

“And Spike doesn’t seem to know what’s going on,” Dawn continued with a sigh.

“Are you kidding?” Buffy asked. “Most of the time I wish I knew as much as Spike does when it comes to B and Ro. I’m sure he knows exactly what’s going on.”

“What is going on then?” Dawn asked.

“I don’t think it’s our business,” Buffy responded wisely.

“Boys are so much less complicated than girls,” observed the younger sister. “So glad I’m done with having kids.”

“I bet you laugh on a daily basis when you think of me.”

“Sometimes twice daily, actually,” quipped the Key. “Can you please talk to your daughter?”
_________________________
Buffy ascended the stairs to the second floor of her house. The animated tones of Nicole Wood forced a smile on the Slayer’s face. Nikki been so hesitant about going to England and now just a day and a half away from her departure, she was so excited.

“And it won’t be all that long before you’ll see me again. Your birthday is in October, you’ll be fifteen and you can come be a potential like me!”

“What makes you think that I’ll be a potential?” Bianca’s voice asked back.

“Come on! We’re both daughters of slayers. How could we not be potentials?” Nikki suggested with enthusiasm, the complete opposite of Bianca’s voice.

And Buffy knew exactly what was wrong with her daughter.

“What if it takes more than that? Your grandmother was a slayer…”

“And your father is a vampire and your aunt is a key. You are so going to be a potential, like me,” Nikki said with pride. “We will have so much fun!”

“Ya, lots of fun.”

On the stairs, Buffy sighed. Ever since Nikki had been born Buffy had known her fate. For the longest time Nikki was just another little girl. Now, just hearing her speak about how much fun being a potential was going to be, she sounded a lot like her mother.

And that was frightening. How would Nikki react if she fell in love with slaying, but was denied being the true slayer, due to Buffy’s immortality?

The Slayer hoped whatever moral compass she and Spike had raised Nikki up with held true.

Buffy leaned against Nikki’s bedroom doorway. “It’s going to be different here without you,” observed Buffy to the potential slayer.

“I’ll be back,” Nikki responded with a smile.

“I know,” Buffy said, smiling back. That much Buffy was certain as well. According to Ariel, Nikki was buried in the cemetery across the street. “Dawn wanted to talk to you Nikki about your passport.”

Buffy followed Bianca out of Nikki’s room and into her own, but waited until Nikki was safely downstairs before beginning her conversation with her daughter.

“So I guess you don’ t want to be exactly like your mother then?” Buffy started. “I mean, hey, college drop out, works nights, not the lifestyle I hoped for myself.”

Bianca stared at the floor refusing to speak.

“What do you want to do with your life?” Buffy kept prodding.

“Oh, how about normal?” Bianca snapped back, venom in her voice.

“Fair enough. I thought you were the normal one here,” Buffy tired to joke.

“How can I be? Not living in this family, that’s for sure. You don’t know how hard it is to know about this side of the world when your friends are completely oblivious.”

That wasn’t true, but Buffy let Bianca rant.

“I live in a house with parents that everyone thinks are unemployed slackers, living off some dead relative’s money. None of my friends have ever seen my father. Why? ‘Cause he doesn’t leave the house, or take me shopping or do any of those dad daytime things that dads are supposed to do.”

“That’s not his fault, B,” Buffy interrupted.

“And then there’s you. You don’t look like a mom! You’ll never get old. Someday I’m going to look older than you! How is that fair? And now, Nikki’s convinced that I’ll be a potential like her, that I’ll be heading to England next year, to learn how to kill things with my bare hands. As if I’m not weird enough let’s disappear for two years! I’m sure that’ll start the rumour mill.”

Buffy gave her daughter a sympathetic look.

“I don’t want to be you, Mom. I don’t even want to be me! I want to be normal with normal parents who have normal jobs. I want to be embarrassed ‘cause you’re corny parent types, instead of making excuses for you when you do show up to things.”

“Hey, we show up!” countered Buffy.

“Like parent teacher night in September? When you spent the whole time in nostalgia land, reminising about the time when Dad crashed your parent teacher night and grandma hit him over the head with an axe? Or, or when you had to explain that Dad couldn’t be a parent volunteer on the zoo trip ‘cause of his skin allergy. Or how you spent 20 minutes telling my French teacher that you actually weren’t 23 like she thought you were. Or we could talk about the spring concert where Dad showed up an hour late ‘cause of sunset and a demon, with a broad sword hidden in his coat. So ya, you show up but you make it worse.”

“It’s not like we mean to.”

“You never mean to. The weird follows you. I want to be normal!”

Buffy moved towards Bianca as if to give her a hug, but drew back when B crossed her arms. “All of us not so normal people want to be normal or wanted to be normal at one point, B,” Buffy began. “And you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, even if you are a potential. It was Nikki’s choice to go. You are in charge of your life. Not the Council, not Giles, not Nikki.”

“And do you really think if I was a potential I could just turn my back on the massive responsibility to the world? Hello, living example of world savage standing right in front of me.”

“True. Look, I’m just saying that no matter what, you get to decide your own fate and if you tell Giles to shove it, even if you are a potential, then I’ll support you. That’s what mom’s do.”

“Thanks.”

“But you still have to talk to Nikki about why you are giving her the silent treatment. Or you know, cut it out.”

Bianca nodded. “Aunty Dawn and Aunty Willow sure are nosy.”

“Yep,” noted Buffy. “Always have been. Probably always will be.”

“Sorry if I don’t jump for joy.”

“You do know that it’s the prerogative of all parents to embarrass slash freak out their kids, right?”

“Sadly.”

“Good, now I need a hug.”

“A hug?”

“Further embarrassment of you.”

“Gotcha.”
_________________________
Confident in her ability to be a mom, Buffy descended the stairs to the living room and walked into her dining room where Dawn and Xander had set up their pre trip preparations. Passports, citizenship cards, landed immigrant cards, birth certificates were all scattered over the polished wood table.

“Don’t touch anything!” Dawn warned her sister. “One wrong move and my system will be all messed up.”

“It’s a messed up system…” muttered Xander earning him a glare. “Which I love, oh love of my life,” he back pedalled.

“Aren’t you bloody well trained,” added Spike from the door leading to the kitchen.

“She says jump, I say how high…” Xander agreed.

“You do not,” Dawn countered.

In the den, attached to the dining room, two brunette and two red headed children turned towards the door and shushed the whole group of adults.

“You’re interrupting!” Jesse Harris piped up.

TJ was, however, the most vocal protester.

“Hey! We are trying to get in as much American TV as we can before we go home Aunt Buffy!”

Buffy nodded acknowledging TJ’s concerns. “We’ll try to keep it down.” Then something occurred to the slayer. “Where are your parents?” Buffy asked looking at both TJ and Danny.

Danny shrugged, but TJ was more than willing to speak up.

“Dad’s out catching up with some wolf friends he has here, while Mom’s visiting Aunty Tara.”

Buffy gave the teen a perplexed look.

“Teleportation,” TJ supplied.

“Bianca’s right. Our families are complicated,” Buffy muttered to no one in particular.

“Yep,” noted Dawn. “Did you talk to Bianca?”

“Yes.”

“And? Did you find out what the problem was?” Dawn persisted.

“Yes.”

“There was a problem?” Spike asked.

“What was it?” Dawn asked, ignoring Spike’s apparent ignorance.

“She’s promised to talk to Nikki about it. Can we just leave it at that?” Buffy asked her sister before heading out the door into the kitchen.

Without a word, Spike followed his wife through the kitchen and down to the training room in the basement.

Once there Buffy turned on the baby monitor to Rowan’s room, keeping an eye out for the napping four year old.

“Bianca doesn’t want to be part of the whole ‘save the world’ club,” Buffy explained.

“Knew that, pet.”

“She wasn’t talking to Nikki, Nikki told Dawn. Dawn told Willow, Dawn told me. It was a whole tattling fest in here.”

“Bianca’s scared. Right she should be. Being a slayer’s rough. Faith bought it. The Brat…” answered Spike.

“And I’m immortal,” Buffy sighed. “If I wasn’t I probably would be here at all. You’d be all single parent. Beating off the single moms with a stick.”

Spike caught her up in his arms. “Only the mother of my own children.”

“All eleven of them,” Buffy giggled before she sobered up. “Do you think B can have a normal life?”

“Didn’t the Nibblet?”

Buffy gave him a look.

“Okay, aside from the Glory thing and the key business…”

“If Bianca wants a normal life, shouldn’t we try to give her as normal a life as possible?” Buffy asked worried. “Nikki thinks that Bianca is going to be a potential but Ariel didn’t say anything about Bianca. Just Nikki. And we saw Victoria.”

“Just because Ariel said, luv…”

“I’m getting my hopes up aren’t I?”

“It’s one of the things that I love about you, slayer,” he said with affection.

“I want to know, Spike. I don’t think I can wait until October. I need to know if she is a potential,” Buffy declared.

“And what good would that do now?” Spike asked hugging his wife close. “They might even take her away sooner.”
_________________________
Tbc…
Potential by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.

Author’s note: Thanks and hugs to BTL for the beta.
Chapter 3: Potential

“It doesn’t work like that,” Willow tried to explain to an irate Buffy.

“Make it work like that, you did the spell down in the hellmouth, you can do anything,” Buffy protested.

Willow raised her hands in defence. “I can’t do it. Until she’s fifteen, I can’t tell if Bianca is a potential or not. You’ll have to wait, it’s only a few months. There is no spell to find potentials until they are fifteen.”

Buffy crossed her arms in a pout. It had seemed so easy. Ask Willow if Bianca was a potential. It would answer questions, maybe solve problems.

True to her agreement, Bianca had started talking to Nikki again, and the two friends and sisters were happy and talkative right up until Dawn, Xander, Jesse, Will, Richard, and Nikki left for England.

Willow, Oz, Dan, and TJ were all packed to go too, but in the opposite direction. They were off to Phoenix to visit Willow’s parents.

Soon the house would be back to normal. Giles and his family had left earlier, sadly not taking Andrew with them once again.

It was proving to be a summer of angst, and Bianca had still to find out that she was going to summer school. That was an announcement better left for when company were far, far away.

Which was what was going to happen imminently. In fact, suitcases were waiting for Willow to levitate them into the trunk of Buffy’s car, or so Dan and TJ were hoping, neither wanting to carry them.

The fact that their mother was a very powerful witch was not lost on them at all.

“I want you to stay!” Rowan complained to her nine year old cousin.

For his part, Dan looked askance at his cousin. Rowan was four and as a nine year old he had no patience for anyone that was younger than him. Also, he was trying to perfect cool. His father was the epitome of cool. He was just waiting for the day when his father would let him dye his hair.

“Buffy, you’ll have to wait until her fifteenth birthday,” Willow concluded. “There’s nothing I can do before then.”

With a sigh, Buffy gave up. She turned to face the stairs behind her, shouting for Bianca and Spike to come down and say goodbye to the departing witch, werewolf and their brood.

Bianca thumped down the stairs. Buffy had been pretty sure that she’d been listening to her mother’s pleading about the spell. It was all for her anyway. There was no reason why she shouldn’t hear about it. Decked out in the lasted fashion, Bianca waved a silent goodbye to her cousins, aunt and uncle.

“Spike!” Buffy bellowed when her vampire husband didn’t come downstairs.

“Da’s asleep,” Bianca noted to her aunt Willow. “’Cause that’s what vampire’s do in the middle of the day,” she concluded with a sigh.

“No, that’s what fathers do when four year olds don’t go to sleep because someone left a whole bag of fuzzy peaches out where a four year old could eat them!” Buffy countered, looking at the fourteen year old.

“It wasn’t me!” Bianca protested.

In a grumble the peroxided vampire descended the stairs, finding himself a place to sit on the second one up from the bottom.

“Have a good trip,” he muttered, bleary eyed. “Don’t freak out your grandparents too much,” he warned the kids.

“I wish!” TJ answered. “Grandma Rosenberg is always trying to analyse me. My unmarried parents make me a prime candidate for many studies.”

“I thought your mother had retired?” Buffy asked Willow.

“She’ll never retire,” muttered the witch, resigned. “She’s rather unpleasant to visit.”

“Last time they visited she told me I was going to hell cause I wasn’t circum…something…” Dan added to the four year old at his feet. “Whatever that is.”

“You don’t want to know,” Spike added, standing again. “Come on, little tree,” he called to his four year old daughter, “there are cartoons with your name on them, and your Da wants to sleep some more before your mum gets back from the airport.”

“And we have to get going,” Buffy added, picking up a suitcase. “Bianca, you could help.”

With a sigh, Bianca did as her mother suggested and followed the group out of the house. All her life she’d lived at the house on Pine street across from the cemetery. Everyone always wanted to come to her house for Halloween, ‘cause it was spooky and dangerous. Of course Halloween was an interesting day in their family.

Just how was she supposed to explain that there was a picture of her mom and a little girl in a Tinkerbell outfit on the mantel, a little girl that clearly wasn’t Bianca or Rowan or Nikki? Or how about the fact that her father laughed openly at the costumed children that came to the door? Or how her mom and dad always thought something bad was going to happen on Halloween.

Which was sad, ‘cause Halloween was Bianca’s birthday.

And Rowan’s birthday.

Bianca hoisted the suitcase she was carrying into the trunk of her mother’s car and stepped back as Willow and her family did the same. Hugged by Aunt Willow, she was nearly into the house before her mother’s voice called her back.

“I expect to see you at home when I come back from the airport, Bianca,” ordered Buffy. “Your father and I need to talk to you.”

A look of horror passed over Bianca’s face. This was not good.

Standing on the front step, Bianca watched the SUV leave the driveway, her mind wondering just what she had done to merit a ‘talk’.

In her fourteen year old brain, life was unfair, unjust, and it was completely mean of her parents to do this to her. Her mother had told her to stay. Her father was upstairs, presumably sleeping while Rowan watched TV.

Of course that didn’t mean she could take advantage of the situation. Her da would know if she left the house, he had those uncanny vampire senses. Damn him.

You would think that she would have some sort of fun powers. You know, if she wasn’t allowed to be normal at least she should be a full fledged freak.

With the impending sense of doom hanging over her, Bianca had no choice but to go back into the house in a pout. She had plans today too. Now that the extended family were all gone she could once again socialise with actual friends.

If you could call them that.

That’s when it suddenly hit her that Nikki was gone. She didn’t have a friend and sister at home anymore to entertain her. Bianca closed the door behind her, the quiet click of the latch louder than she thought it should be. Or maybe it was just her imagination.

Her feet took her upstairs towards her room. When extended family was not visiting, the second floor of the house was the only floor on which people slept. She stood at the top of the stairs contemplating just how her family had changed. To her right was Rowan’s tiny room. The nursery. It had been her room when she was born, and the next time her mom got pregnant it would be that baby’s room. Next to Rowan’s room was her parents’, the soft sounds of a Disney musical emanating from it. It a safe bet that both Rowan and her da were sleeping curled up together.

To her left, was the now empty room Nikki used to call home. Bianca walked to the doorway and pushed it open. Nikki had left a lot of her stuff behind, posters, stuffed animals, and her large shoe collection.

Nikki was her sister. Of course at some point she knew that they all weren’t going to live together forever, even if her parents were immortal. Someday they’d both go off to university. Bianca just figured that they would go together.

And then there was Richard.

She was less broken up about him leaving. She had known that he was going to go. It had been planned, discussed and debated around many family dinners. Richard wanted to be a watcher, like grandpa Giles, like his father had been (sorta). There was no way he was going to be a slayer, being a guy and all, and vampirism was just weird, (no offence to Da).

His room upstairs in the attic was all packed up. Richard didn’t expect to come back except for holidays for the rest of his life. Eventually he’d move all of his stuff out of the room and to England.

No more older brother looking out for her. No more older sister doing the same. Bianca was the older sister now. No longer the middle child.

It was like a huge mountain of responsibility just crashed down on her shoulders. Quick steps carried her to her own room on the far side of Nikki’s empty room. She slammed her door and threw herself onto her bed.

Two doors down, Spike blinked, his eyes being fixed upon the singing mermaid on the TV screen before him. In his arms, Rowan sat enraptured, the slammed door barely registering with her. He kissed the top of her brown head and manoeuvred himself out from behind her.

“Gotta talk to your sister,” he whispered.

Rowan nodded, her eyes never leaving the screen.

He had to say that he was lucky that only one of his offspring ever had a Dawn sized meltdown at a time. Upon reflection, he didn’t know what was more remarkable in that sentence. That he had offspring, or that he knew that they would subject him to Dawn sized meltdowns.

It came from procreating with a Summers girl.

To have yet more Summers girls.

But the eldest was crying her beating heart out. He might have a soul and be all reformed and such, but he still had all those nice vampire senses. Spike leaned up against the doorframe, turned the knob, and pushed the door open with his foot.

“Go away Da!” Bianca sobbed into her pillow.

“Not likely. I don’t appreciate doors being slammed in my house. It tends to make the super sensitive hearing cranky. You don’t want to see me cranky.”

Bianca sat up, her nose red and sniffly. She wasn’t close to laughing yet, but Spike could see the glimmer of not depressed and crying return.

“Your mother let it slip that we had to talk to you?” he said more than questioned.

Bianca nodded, the look of fear returning to her face.

“She never was one to keep her mouth shut. Right then. The talk. You are going to summer school. Starts on Monday. Here ends the talk.”

If she wasn’t so angry at him, Spike was convinced that Bianca would have been laughing. He was a damn funny vamp when he decided to be.

“What!” Bianca shouted as it all sunk in. “Why do I have to go to summer school?”

“You failed math.”

“I did NOT fail math. A fifty-five percent means that I passed math…by a whole five percent!” she added.

“Do I really need to argue against this point? Seems pretty clear to me. And I’ve been dead for a good long time.”

“What does being dead got to do with it?”

“Lost on the young,” Spike mumbled with a shake of his head. “Regardless, Bianca, you are going to summer school. And before you go and turn on the waterworks, I’ve already talked to the mother of that friend of yours, Diane is going too. You won’t be friendless in a sea of delinquents.”

“You think I’m a delinquent?” Bianca exclaimed. “Great, you think I’m dumb and I’m a delinquent.”

“No,” he said slowly for clarification. “I think you have more potential in grade nine math than a fifty-five percent and I am hoping that you will be a shining example of how young ladies should act. Though I can’t imagine why I would think that as the only examples you’ve had are your mother and Nikki.”

“I’m girlier than mum.”

“And that’s saying something.”

And then they said nothing for a while. Spike could still hear that blasted mermaid’s singing coming from his bedroom while Bianca refused to look him in the eye.

“You got anything else in that pretty blond head of yours that needs talking out?” Spike asked.

“Oh, how about my life is a mess. I’m going to be a superhero in training on my birthday, I have no real friends, except Nikki, but wait she’s gone. My parents are immortal superheroes who look like they couldn’t have possibly raised three teenagers and a kindergartener. I have to be the responsible one now, ‘cause Nikki and Richard are gone. And NOW I have to go to summer school.”

“Life is rough when you are fourteen,” Spike noted. “Not that it gets any easier as time goes by.”

“You’ve got the easiest life ever!” Bianca ranted.

“Hardly, button,” Spike answered, using the nickname that he’d had for Bianca when she was young. A nickname that Bianca had expressly asked him not to use when she turned eleven.

“How? How is it not easy for you? You sleep all day, you have live in baby sitters while you go off and butchered demons…”

“Bad demons,” Spike was quick to point out.

“And you get paid for something you would do anyways, ‘cause it’s mom’s calling, blah blah bitty blah. There’s always blood in the fridge, and if there isn’t, there’s mom, which is extremely gross now that I think about it. You’re never going to die, unless you trip and fall on something wooden, and you’ll wait out the rest of your unlife waiting for that stupid prophecy on the fridge door to come to pass. And you’ll probably just shrug your shoulders and go ‘huh’ when it does, and find something new to wonder about. You’re never going to die!”

“That’s a good thing right?” came Rowan’s voice from behind Spike. “I don’t want Da to die. Not again.”

Stooping for a moment, Spike lifted his youngest daughter up into his arms, a look of concern on his face. Rowan was four now, she was starting to pick up on things that were said in the house. Not that they’d ever tried to keep secrets from the children.

“How do you mean, little tree?” Spike probed, wanting to know just how much of his history Rowan had picked up.

“Mommy said that you’d died before. You were even stevens. Is your real name Steven?”

Spike and Bianca chuckled.

“Da’s real name is William. William Graves,” Bianca answered.

“And I’m Rowan Graves,” Rowan beamed proudly. “Rowan Tara Graves.”

“That you are little tree,” Spike responded. He turned his attention back to Bianca. “We done here?” he asked. “I want this out and ranted before your mother gets home. Two crazed and ranting Summers women I don’t think I can handle at once.”

“I’m a Graves woman!” noted Rowan proudly.

“Give me a few years before we decide, alright little tree,” he asked, setting her down. “I’m starting to think that maybe you’ve got some Rosenburg in you.”
________________________________

Tbc…
Interpretation by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.

Author’s note: Thanks to Diane for letting me fulfill a whim and write her into this story. Thanks BTL for being a great beta.
Chapter 4: Interpretation

It had been arranged, the first day of summer school that Diane would come and pick Bianca up on her way. Bianca wondered just how she was going to avoid having Diane in the house. Diane was far too curious for her own good and had been hinting about coming over throughout the spring.

Bianca had a personal rule: no friends over. She made up this rule when in the fifth grade her friend Maia had come over to do a project and had accidentally poured herself a class of O positive instead of tomato juice.

Bianca also resolved to never be friends with a person who enjoyed tomato juice. It was just unnatural for a kid to like tomato juice.

She could still remember the way the blood spurted out of Maia’s mouth and all over the kitchen when her friend started gagging on her mouthful.

So there was no way that Diane was getting into the house. None whatsoever, Bianca decided as she touched up her mascara in the bathroom mirror. Nope, no teenagers of Japanese decent in her home. No teenagers of any ethnicity, while she was at it.

She had discovered one thing that was a plus since Nikki had left, she had more uninterrupted bathroom time. Yes, there were three bathrooms in the house, but when each of them were on different levels of the house, three women vied for the first floor bathroom, the losers of the daily rush having to go either to the basement or the attic.

Bianca ran a hand through her blond locks and gave herself a wink. Yes, she was looking pretty fine this morning, just enough to catch the eye of any hotties that were resigned to make up grade nine math this summer. Not that she’d ever bring them home to meet her parents though.

The doorbell rang, and before Bianca could get to it, Buffy opened the door, wearing her workout gear.

“Hey, Diane,” Buffy greeted the teen. “Come in, Bianca’s getting ready.”

Bianca groaned to her reflection. Diane had already made it into the house. A mad dash to grab her bag and Bianca was running down the stairs to the hallway. Diane was standing making small talk with her mom, who was way too cool looking to be a mom of four.

“Hey, Bianca!” Diane greeted the blond teen.

“Hi, ready to go?” Bianca said without preamble, even shooting her mom a glare for good measure.

“We have time,” Diane responded, her eyes darting around the house. “I’ve never been in your house before.”

“Maybe you can come over sometime for dinner or something,” Buffy offered, ignoring Bianca’s glare. “But I think B wants to be early for summer school.”

“Miracles happen,” came Spike’s voice from the kitchen. He too looked like he had just come from the training room, shirtless, Rowan walking up behind him.

Why or why couldn’t her family sleep in?

The look of shock and just a little bit of drool on Diane’s face was enough to really get Bianca in a bad mood. Her friend was ogling her dad. That was extremely gross. When Diane started to giggle nervously, and began to flush, Bianca had had enough.

“Spike, come meet Diane,” Buffy introduced, “this is Spike, Bianca’s father.”

The twinkle in Buffy’s eye as she introduced the teen to her husband belied the amusement she had in Diane’s reaction.

“It is so time to go!” Bianca said firmly, grabbing Diane’s hand and tugging her around to face the door. “Bye! Be back for lunch!”

Bianca didn’t stop walking until they were safely on the street.

When she did let go of Diane‘s hand, she turned to face her, a look of annoyance on her face.

“Ooh baby!” commented Diane.

“He’s my Dad, you can’t drool over my Dad! It’s just wrong!” Bianca hissed. “Gross.”

“I can’t help it, he‘s cute.”

“Argh!”

Bianca stamped off towards school intent on ignoring Diane for the rest of the day. Unfortunately that didn’t quite work out, as Diane was the only other person she knew in the class. And there were no hotties. It seemed all the cute guys in her grade had passed math.

Bianca sat despondently beside Diane as the summer school teacher prattled on about exponents, ignoring Diane, who was trying to get her attention. Eventually, Diane gave up and instead wrote a note.

Diane’s hand placed the note right on top of the equation the blond was copying down from the board. Bianca opened up the note carefully, hoping not to draw the attention of the teacher or anyone else in the class. She hadn’t yet determined if summer school teachers could give detention or not.

A phone call to her parents on the first day of summer school would get her in way too much trouble.

SORRY!

Totally didn’t mean to be a spaz in front of your parents. I just didn’t expect them to be so young looking. Your mom really takes care of herself. Four kids and she looks like that? Amazing. Please talk to me. I am so sorry. D


Bianca felt a little bad for taking it all out on Diane. So she wrote back.

My two older siblings are adopted. Just try to act normal next time you see them. I’m sure that my mom will have you over for dinner at some point. She likes to meet my friends. Be warned though, she can’t cook. And you can’t drink anything red from the fridge.

Bianca watched Diane as she read the note out of the corner of her eye. As Diane nodded, Bianca let her attention drift back to the math on the board. Maybe this summer wouldn’t be so bad.
_________________________________________
Buffy looked up from her book as her four year old child ran screaming, giggling, as the child’s father chased her around the house. It had been increasingly difficult to tire Rowan out for her afternoon nap, and Spike was still determined that she needed one.

Possibly because he wanted someone to talk to in the wee hours of the morning when he and Buffy were back from patrol and Buffy was dead to the world and he was still hyped up on the adrenaline from the night’s exploits.

Rowan usually woke up way too early. Spike liked it. Rowan was starting school in September and once that happened Spike wasn’t going to have one on one early morning time with either of his girls.

Buffy was going to give it another two years before Spike decided that they needed another bundle of joy. She reflected on how she had been so disappointed that she wasn’t getting pregnant fifteen years ago. Now, she was going to be forever wondering when the next time Spike’s little men would get all magiked up. Until that happened though, she had one teenager experiencing angst over summer school and one almost kindergartener who was going to pitch a fit when she actually went to school.

Heavy feet thumped down the stairs and into the living room. Buffy tried to hide her smile as Bianca frowned into the room, a phone pressed to her ear.

“Can you please do something about the noise?” Bianca asked, cranky. “I can’t hear Diane talk.”

“I don’t know why you had to phone her, you just spent the morning with her,” came Buffy’s response.

Bianca continued frowning at her mother, even as Buffy’s expression changed drastically.

“What?” Bianca asked, frowning.

“I just sounded like my mother,” Buffy gasped, unable to account for the occurrence.

Bianca’s attention was diverted to the phone at her ear again. “What? No, she was having a ‘oh my god I’m turning into my mother moment’. Ignore her, and the screaming. You are so lucky you are the youngest child.”

Bianca stomped off up the stairs again.

Buffy’s shock was momentary. Spike and Rowan came running into the living room again, a high pitched noise coming from Rowan’s mouth. The Slayer made eye contact with the little girl and she halted in her tracks.

“Whatcha doing Mommy?” she asked, ignoring Spike for the moment and climbing up onto the couch with her mother.

“Reading boring stuff that Andrew’s making me read,” Buffy answered truthfully.

The latest massive volume that Andrew said that she should read sat on her lap, and it was only slayer strength that enabled her to keep from sinking into the couch from the weight of it. He’d said it had something to do with the prophecy on the fridge.

It always had to do with the prophecy on the fridge.

“Read it to me?” Rowan asked in a sleepy voice.

“Of course Little Tree,” Buffy whispered, placing a kiss on the child’s forehead. “Is it alright if your Da goes and has his nap?”

“Sure,” Rowan responded with a sigh, now curled up in Buffy’s lap.

Spike leaned forward and placed his own kiss on the child’s forehead and headed upstairs for his own respite from the day. Buffy continued reading from where she’d been interrupted.

“To the hallowed ground, among the filth the saviour will come, predestined, broken, alone. Filth will plague her, breed her, be bred from her. The unnatural, unclean will forsake her. In all the chaos and horror of the past, a shining light purifies her. She is the blood. She is the sacrifice. She is the saviour.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. They were all the same, the texts about her. Wallowing in filth, dealing with blood, gore, and evil was just tedious to read about. Especially when she actually lived it. Last night she’d had to shower three times just to make sure that she got all the exploding demon guts out of her hair. That was story that she wasn’t going to be telling Rowan for a bedtime tale.

“The dark finds the blood, he is drawn.”

Here Andrew wrote a little note on a yellow post it: “Who could not be?”

One thing she could say for Andrew, when he interpreted texts about the Slayer, he always put it to a romantic angle. Obviously ‘the dark’ meant Spike, according to Andrew anyway.

“Dark and broken, joined to the saviour, bred with the saviour, forsaken by the saviour.”

Another note by Andrew the wonder watcher: “I think this is a reference to the past.”

Buffy nodded, noticing that Rowan still had her eyes open, but that they were drooping slowly.

“In all the chaos and horror of the past, a darkness purifies him. He is the blood.”

Well that’s good to know, Buffy thought to herself.

“Blood of light, blood of dark, blood of blood. Blood is spilt to cover up the evils of blood’s evil.
It is undercover of darkness that blood is hidden. Three times blood is split, and three times evil rises. Blood of light, blood of dark, cycle begins anew.”

“Well we already knew that, didn’t we?” Buffy asked her four year old.

“First Blood, redeemed. Second Blood, unrepentant. Third Blood, cursed. Blood of Blood in the balance. Triumvirate in the balance. Purified of light, purified of dark, the death of the saviour is prophesied. ”

“Huh.”
_______________________________________
“You sent it to Giles? Right?” Buffy hissed into the phone. “Please tell me that you sent it to Giles, Andrew.”

On the other end of the phone line Andrew babbled. Of course he’d sent it to Giles.

“I sent it to Giles before I let you look at it,” Andrew explained. “What kind of watcher do you think I am?” he asked.

“Oh, how about the kind that tells me to use the force?” Buffy retorted. “Andrew, it says that I’m not immortal!”

“You want to be immortal?” the watcher asked.

“Well I was kinda getting used to the idea.”

“It didn’t say you were going to die today. And didn’t a little cherub from the future tell you that you were going to die anyway? This just all fits in with everything you already know.”

“Well it’s not happy making.”

“I didn’t expect it to be. The task now is interpreting this new information.”

“And that’s another thing. You’ve been looking for stuff on my prophecy for years, how come you find this now? Where did you find it?”

“EBay. Actually Anya got it for me. She was doing some eBay haggling for Giles’ birthday present and got this in the deal.”

“So what does it mean?” Buffy asked, noting to talk to Anya about why she still insisted on using eBay when she was a demon and all.

“What do you think it means?” Andrew asked.

“Don’t give me that crap Andrew!” Buffy hissed even louder.

“It’s called interpretation for a reason, oh slayer of the vampyres. Use your own brain, it’s your life after all. I can’t do everything for you. Even Luke had to figure things out without Obi Wan.”

Ugh, Star Wars metaphor.

Buffy hefted the large book up onto the kitchen counter, careful not to thump it too loudly, she did have a sleeping four year old on the couch, and a napping vampire upstairs. Bianca had thankfully gone out to the store when she realised that she was out of her favourite shampoo.

Actually it wasn’t that she was out, but rather that Rowan had decided to squirt it all into her bathwater as Buffy was preparing for the bi weekly bathing of the four year old that didn’t like to get wet. A very dressed, very giddy and very guilty tree of the Rowan variety had explained that she had wanted a bubble bath. It was odd that not ten minutes later, when Rowan was in the bath, that actual bubble bath bubbles started foaming as she splashed around.

Buffy read the passage and cursed Andrew for not sending her a photocopy.

“’To the hallowed ground, among the filth the saviour will come, predestined, broken, alone.’ Okay, so hallowed ground, the hellmouth, ’cause well, maybe not to us, but to the demons, sure, it’s all sacred. And the filth, that’s another term for creatures that desecrate anything hallowed. So probably inferior demons or even people. And yeah, I was slightly broken and alone when I came here,” Buffy interpreted over the phone.

“Continue my young apprentice.”

“’Filth will plague her, breed her, be bred from her.’ Yuck, so filth is obviously people. I’m not sure they plague me, but I was born a human, and I had human kids right?”

“To some that remains in question, but I like the way your mind is moving,” Andrew encouraged her.

“’The unnatural, unclean will forsake her.’ Yeah I got nothing.”

“How about when humans deserted you. I must say that I am extremely proud to have been away on a vital and dangerous mission when the potentials kicked you out of your own house,” offered Andrew.

“Whatever. ‘In all the chaos and horror of the past, a shining light purifies her.’ Um, maybe when the PTB’s decided to make me the only slayer again?”

“Perhaps.”

“’She is the blood. She is the sacrifice. She is the saviour.’ The one girl in all the world, blah blah bitty blah. I am the Slayer. What’s new?”

“Keep going.”

“’The dark finds the blood, he is drawn.’”

“Kinda romantic isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Buffy noted sarcastically. “I am so caught up in the romance of the prophecy predicting my death.” Buffy sighed, but continued. “’Dark and broken, joined to the saviour, bred with the saviour, forsaken by the saviour.’ So, Spike is joined with me, we are married, we have kids, more on the way someday, and yes I was a nasty bitch once upon a time. But we’ve forgiven each other for that. I hardly think that it needs to be dredged up by some prophecy. ‘In all the chaos and horror of the past, a darkness purifies him. He is the blood.’ He also drinks blood and then doesn’t put his mug in the dishwasher.”

“I thought you were going to talk to him about that?” Andrew asked changing the topic.

“He distracted me.”

“How?”

“The usual way, with his lips. Stupid vampire. Okay so then we get to the part we already know. ‘Blood of light, blood of dark, blood of blood. Blood is spilt to cover up the evils of blood’s evil.
It is undercover of darkness that blood is hidden. Three times blood is split, and three times evil rises. Blood of light, blood of dark, cycle begins anew.’”

“Which we are still no closer to coming up with a plausible explanation for,” muttered Andrew.

“Giles thinks that it means that I am going to die three times.”

“Giles isn’t right about everything. I have valid ideas too!”

“Of course you do Andrew,” Buffy placated him. “Now the last part. ‘First Blood, redeemed. Second Blood, unrepentant. Third Blood, cursed. Blood of Blood in the balance. Triumvirate in the balance. Purified of light, purified of dark, the death of the saviour is prophesied.’ The part that says I’m going to die.”

“But only after all that blood stuff happens,” Andrew reminded her.

“It’s always about the blood.”
__________________________________________
Tbc…
Little Witch by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.

Author’s note: BTL, my beta, wonderful beyond the telling of it.
Chapter 5: Little Witch

As per Buffy’s insistence, and convinced that she was fostering a friendship that would help Bianca as she missed Nikki, Diane was invited over for dinner within the week. Bianca spent the days leading up to the encounter prepping both her family and Diane.

“You can’t have any blood in the fridge. Da can’t vamp out. Rowan can’t do anything weird. Andrew can’t come over,” Bianca ranted to her mother. “And you have to take the prophecy off the fridge.”

Buffy looked at her daughter with sympathetic eyes. “I’ll put the blood in the training room fridge. Your father won’t vamp out. I can’t guarantee anything about Rowan though. And the prophecy stays on the fridge, it’s been there since before you were born. It survived the fridge replacement after the Fyarl demon got into the house when you were three,” she said decidedly firm.

“It’s weird!”

“Yes, we are weird, Bianca. I know you want the normal, but honey, it’s not going to happen with us. Your father is a vampire. Your mother is a slayer. Your sister….well we don’t know what she is yet.”

“She’s a witch Mom. Accept it and move on.”

“There’s no proof of that, B.”

“How else can you explain how the walls in her room suddenly changed from pink to yellow? You know she doesn’t like pink.”

“You make the sense. But Willow…”

“Aunty Willow isn’t here. She doesn’t see the weird. Or maybe she does. She’s a little oblivious you know.”

Buffy nodded. “I don’t want Rowan to be a witch,” the Slayer admitted. “It means she’ll have to go away to school, learn to control the power.”

“There isn’t a witch preschool is there?” Bianca asked hopefully.

“That’s harsh. No matter what you say, I know you love your little sister. You’ll be sad when you can’t see her everyday.”

“Like you and Aunt Dawn?”

“Exactly.”

“Fine, I’ll be tolerant of Rowan’s strangeness,” Bianca conceded. “I don’t want Diane to think I’m completely weird.”

“I hope you are the most normal of us all,” Buffy noted.

“Oh that’s great Mom, remind me that I have that to look forward to in October.”

“You can have a party if you want? For your birthday? I’ll tell Willow to hold off on the spell until afterwards.”

“Nice present.”

Prepping Diane took a different vein. Bianca thought she was being subtle. She wasn’t.

“So, what embarrasses you, family wise?” Bianca asked as they walked home from summer school one day.

Diane shrugged. “Um, my mom can’t drive? She’s always getting my dad and my older sister to drive her places. It’s not all that embarrassing though. What embarrasses you about your family?”

“How about everything? They are so not normal.”

“Maybe your parents should buy a house away from the cemetery? Maybe it’s dead vibes from all the corpses that are making your family weird?”

“You have no idea how right you are.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that we’ll move. The Graves will be in that house until it gets sucked into hell.”

“That’s a vivid mental image. I just figured the whole planet would turn into some sort of desert and the human race would all retreat into caves.”

“Nope, it’s sucked into hell for us. You cannot ask my parents about anything religious or hell or the afterlife, ‘kay?”

Diane raised an eyebrow to that.

“They are strange. It’s best if you don’t lead them down that path.”
_____________________________________
At the actual event, Bianca thought her family was on their best behaviour. It was all polite and normal. Buffy asked about school and Spike asked about any boys in their math class who were cute.

Bianca blushed, but she enjoyed the normality. Normal non-vampire fathers asked about boys. Normal non-vampire fathers didn’t usually follow up on the threat to kill any boys who treated them badly.

Rowan was actually a normal four year old too. More or less. Bianca noticed that the little girl’s dress changed from green to yellow and then to blue as they ate, but it didn’t appear that Diane noticed.

“Why’d you choose to live across from a cemetery?” Diane asked between the main course and the dessert.

Inwardly, Bianca groaned.

Buffy chuckled, but left it to her husband to respond to this question.

“The price was right. Quiet street. Right, pet?” Spike offered, feeling a little more than usually put on the spot. He wasn’t the one that chose the house. And he knew exactly why Buffy had chosen the house. It made vampire slaying easier when you lived right across the street from a cemetery.

“I just fell in love with it when I saw it,” Buffy explained.

“You don’t mind all the dead people?”

Spike snorted.

“Of course not,” Buffy answered. “They have as much right as the next person to live someplace nice.”

“It’s got to be creepy at Halloween,” Diane continued.

“Not usually,” Spike said, “though there are the occasional drunken teenagers that decide they are being smart by hanging out in the cemetery.”

“Da scares them away though,” piped up Rowan. “Lots of people think Da is scary.”

“Why?” Diane asked.

“He has a scary face,” Rowan answered.

Somewhere in the house there was a pop sound and an angry female voice with a British accent started yelling from upstairs.

Buffy knew exactly who it was too. She excused herself from the table and bolted upstairs, leaving Spike and Bianca to deal with the explanation.

Up on the first floor landing, TJ and Willow were yelling.

“She’s terrible! I’m not going to stay there anymore. I’m normal! I have lots of normal friends. I don’t care if she thinks that being a witch is abnormal or a misguided attempt to gain closeness with my mother who is still clearly rebelling from the structured life she tried to give you. I want to go home. I want to be able to hang out with my friends. Hecate invited me over to her house. Lily invited me over to her house. Why can’t I go visit them instead of my grandmother the psychologist?”

“TJ!” Buffy hissed. “Shh! Bianca has a friend over for dinner.”

“Great, Mom, you’ve messed up Bianca’s visit. How come you had to apparate here?”

“It’s called teleportation, TJ, and I didn’t know Bianca had a friend over,” Willow defended herself. “We’ll have to go down and excuse ourselves. It was completely rude of us to intrude.”

“I don’t mind the intrusion,” Buffy noted, “just that this is an important night for Bianca. This is the first time she’s ever allowed a friend to come over and meet her family.”

“It isn’t a boy type friend is it?” Willow asked with curiosity.

“No,” Buffy laughed. “But come down for some dessert. I’m sure we can salvage the situation somehow. Also, I really need you to look at Rowan for a minute.”

Willow nodded, even as TJ was bounding down the stairs.

“My mother is a menace,” Willow breathed watching her daughter go down the stairs. “Or maybe it’s TJ. We hardly ever see her anymore, she’s away at school, but when she comes home it’s like she’d rather be at school still.”

“As I recall Willow, you spent a lot of time at school avoiding your parents,” Buffy reminded her friend.

“I guess. But I’m a witch! Wouldn’t the similarities make for some bonding opportunities?” Willow complained.

“Why didn’t you mentioned this when you were here?” Buffy asked.

“Because TJ promised to not to mention school for the time that she was here, she likes it here. I think knowing the Slayer gives her some brownie points at school. Apparently one of her best friends’ father is some big deal.”

“You’re a big deal, Willow,” Buffy soothed her friend’s feelings.

“Apparently not big enough to impress TJ any more.”

Buffy gave her friend a hug. “It’ll get better. I made cheesecake for dessert.”

Down stairs, TJ was explaining the ways she hated her grandmother to Bianca and Diane.

“You are so glad you’ve never met Sheila Rosenberg,” TJ finished, and sunk into a vacant chair, just as Buffy and Willow entered the room.

“Something I am glad of every day, pet,” Spike responded. “Are we having dessert or not?”

“Cheesecake!” Rowan announced gleefully clapping her hands.

“I’ll get the cheesecake,” Buffy said immediately, walking towards the kitchen, afraid that if she didn’t go and get the cake quickly, somehow the cake would move into the dining room of its own volition.

“How’s summer school?” TJ asked her cousin. “I’d love to be at school during the summer.”

“Why?” Diane asked. “It’s hot and we have to do stuff we’ve already done. Boring.”

My school’s not boring,” TJ noted with a twinkle in her eye.

“I can’t imagine a school that isn’t boring. You’ve got to have something about your school that you don’t like?” Diane continued.

“History isn’t that exciting. But it’s funny to watch the professor.”

“Why?”

“Uh…he’s just unusual,” TJ explained.

Bianca was eternally thankful for TJ’s reluctance to talk that openly about her school. Bianca had heard some strange things about TJ’s witch school.

Buffy came out with the cheesecake and started serving up slices, each slice dripped with a generous helping of cherry topping on it. Except the piece she handed Spike. Bianca balked at the slice of cheesecake that her mother handed her father. There was blood on the cake. She looked wide eyed at her mother, imploring her to stop.

Buffy just rolled her eyes. This was far from hard to explain, and there was no way that Diane was going to realise that it was actually blood.

“I don’t like cherries!” Rowan pouted.

“Rowan, just eat your cheesecake, please,” Buffy asked the four year old. “You liked cherries yesterday.”

“I don’t like them today!”

“Well you aren’t getting anything else. Either eat this or don’t eat. This is dessert.”

“I want blueberry!”

“Rowan, you don’t need to yell. You aren’t getting blueberry. If you continue you will be removed from the table.”

Rowan crossed her arms and frowned at the cheesecake in front of her, which suddenly had the topping turned into blueberry.

“Holy crap!” Diane shouted, pointing at the cheese cake. “How did you do that?”

Bianca groaned.

Buffy moved to pick up the four year old and remove her from the table.

“I’m taking it that this is what you wanted to talk about me with?” Willow side whispered.

“Oh yeah,” Buffy noted, picking up the little girl and taking her upstairs.

“How’d she do that?” Diane asked again.

“She’s a witch!” TJ announced proudly. “Does that mean she can come to school with me?”

“She’s not going to school in England!” Spike protested.

“But if she’s a witch she should go to a school that will teach her what she needs to know,” TJ responded.

“TJ, it’s up to Buffy and Spike where they send Rowan for school,” Willow added. “Eat your cheesecake.”
____________________________
“Rowan,” Buffy started, sitting on Rowan’s bed, in the now yellow room. “You can’t do that kind of thing in front of Bianca’s friends.”

“Why?”

“Because Bianca’s friends aren’t used to you turning things different colours or flavours. It’s not exactly normal.”

“And Bianca wants to be normal?”

“She does.”

“Normal’s boring, Mommy.”

“Not always.”
________________________________
When Diane left, Bianca was certain that her friend would never want to talk to her again. A little sister that turned cherry cheesecake into blueberry cheesecake and a cousin that spouted the virtues of being a witch would have been enough to drive anyone normal away.

“If she’s a true friend, she’ll be back,” Buffy noted as she closed the front door of the house. “Remember, Uncle Xander and Aunt Willow were normal kids. I was the one that was a freak.”

“But Aunt Willow turned out to be a witch,” Bianca countered.

“And Uncle Xander is still a normal guy. He’s just familiar with the freaky.”

“And he married a Key.”

“I chalk that up to…yeah, I got nothing there.”

“So by your reasoning, Diane will either, never see me again, or will turn out to really want to be a Scooby?”

“Or she just might want to be your friend.”

“Whatever.” Bianca stalked up the stairs, passing Willow on her way down.

“Diagnosis?” Buffy asked her friend, referring to her youngest. “Please tell me that it can be cured.”

“Nope. It’s a hopeless case.”

“Wonderful. She’s supposed to go to kindergarten in September. How is she supposed to go to kindergarten?”

“I suggest a dampening spell on the house and on her school. Until she’s old enough to learn to control her emotions, and her impulses, she’s going to be a danger to everyone she’s with.”

“Did you have to do this with TJ?” the Slayer asked.

Willow nodded. “She told me last summer when she came home from school that most witches get home schooled until the age of eleven. But then they have parents who can undo the damage they do.”

“I don’t really have the ability to control her. I’m not you. Maybe home schooling would be better.”

“No, lets give the kindergarten thing a year at least. You never know, she might have a really good time interacting with other kids. If it’s a really big problem we can discuss options then.”

“What about your problems?” Buffy asked, referring to TJ.

“I’m going to send her to Giles. Oz and Danny are still at my mother’s house, and I’m not going to push this anymore. I know I shouldn’t give up. But really, if I can’t stand my mother, how can I expect my daughter, who has lived in a tolerant house her whole life, to deal with intolerance on such a concentrated scale?”

“Anya will be sympathetic to TJ.”

“Anya thinks that Kristina is a witch too.”

“TJ will love that.”

“Yeah, she really will.”
________________________________________
Tbc…
Vampires by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.

Author’s note: Beta’d by the wonderful BTL.
Chapter 6: Vampires

In the end, Diane did come back. Buffy never doubted it. The teenager was far too interested in the strangeness that was Bianca’s life to stay away long. It was probably why Bianca didn’t seem too thrilled with this renewed interest, or Diane’s enthusiasm for it.

TJ was taken back to England, and Willow returned to her parent’s home in Phoenix. With Willow’s dampening spell in place, Rowan became more prone to temper tantrums, but Bianca grew happier that things weren’t suddenly changing colour.

One more small crisis averted, Buffy and Spike set out to concentrate on a bigger crisis: a group of demons were aiming to end the world, again.

This wasn’t particularly new in their world, but it had been a long time since either of them were called on to avert an apocalypse.

“Not since Rowan was born,” Spike commented, flipping through the research that Andrew had put together for them.

“Maybe we should get her an ornament, Baby’s first apocalypse,” Buffy commented. “If we had an apocalypse tree, how many ornaments do you think we’d have?”

“Stopped counting after number ten,” Spike noted, tossing aside a piece of parchment that he didn’t want to read anymore. “Does the nerd really think we want to read all this rubbish?”

Buffy shot her husband a sympathetic smile.

“We aren’t the bloody Scoobies. You’d think that he’d realise that. You and I, we’re the muscle.”

“So, you are saying we should recruit some new scoobies?” Buffy asked. “I think we are getting a little old to start hanging out in high school libraries…”

“Not old,” Spike responded, “I’m in the prime of my unlife. And you are as beautiful as ever.”

“And we have a fourteen year old… Face it Spike, we are old. You are older than most. Most people born in the 1850’s are long dead.”

“I am long dead, love,” he said, grinning.

“Just be glad I’m irresistibly attracted to the cold and dead then,” Buffy whispered, putting down the text she was reading and crawling into Spike’s lap. “I think research time is over.”

“How much time do you think we have?” Spike asked, picking her up and carrying her into the family room, and laying her down on the couch.

“Child #1 is due back from school in an hour. Child #2 is napping and should be out until Bianca comes home,” Buffy responded as she unzipped her pants.

“An hour? That’s no challenge,” he laughed in response, unzipping his own jeans.

“We’ll see about that,” Buffy answered. “I can make it challenging if you want.”

“Gotta love a slayer who knows what she wants,” he purred, crouching down to meet her on the couch. Their lips met and the friendly, playful banter ceased.

In all the years of their marriage, Buffy never believed that she’d get bored with Spike. Some days he was the quintessential father and husband, loving and tender, others, she was afraid for her clothes, and scarring her children for life. Pressed as she was into the cushions of the couch, Buffy allowed herself to be caught up in the moment. His exploring hands found her breasts with ease, and she arched into his touch, cool and familiar. Teasingly, one free hand slid between her legs and began tapping out a rhythm on what lay there.

He’d once asked her to stop wearing ‘knickers’.’ If they were going to resorting to quickies until the children grew up and moved away (and given the number of children they expected to have, it wasn‘t going to be any time soon,) he wanted her accessible to him when he wanted. She hadn’t worn underwear since.

Spike nuzzled the bite marks Buffy had on her neck, his marks, proclaiming her his and only his. Biting down on the scars with blunt human teeth sent a shiver down Buffy’s body to the place where Spike was thrusting into her.

“Harder,” Buffy ordered, “but don’t break the couch.”

He growled in response and followed the orders given. The whole couch pounded against the wall, only to stop when both superheroes stopped a moment to see if the sleeping four year old had heard and woken up.

Buffy supposed it was comical, that two beings who fought evil on regular basis were afraid of waking a child. Buffy pushed the coffee table out of the way with her feet and rolled them off the couch and onto the floor, to resume their activities. She dug her nails into his pale skin and urged him on, suppressing her moans by biting her lip.

She bit so hard blood started to trickle down her chin. The frantic pace of their coupling wasn’t enough to keep Spike from taking advantage of the red gold flowing down his wife’s chin. His tongue was there in an instant, licking her chin clean, careful not to nick her skin with his now prominent fangs.

Then the front door opened. The two parents scrambled to clothe themselves and face the potential child that was coming through the door.

Spike was up and zipped before his wife, having never actually taken off his pants. He practically fell into the dinning room and faced his eldest who was standing in the kitchen doorway, poised at the fridge.

“There was a power outage,” Bianca explained, opening the fridge and not even looking at her father. “They sent us home.” Bianca grabbed a can of something and turned around, shutting the fridge. Looking up at her father and rolling her eyes, Bianca opened her can of Sprite and headed out of the kitchen. “Da, your fangs are showing,” she muttered in disgust.

Buffy came up behind her husband and put her hand on his shoulder, turning him around to face her. “Don’t mind her,” Buffy said with a smile. “I love your fangs.” She leaned forward and planted a kiss on his lips, allowing him to suck a little more blood from her cut lip.
_______________________________
The summer waned, and though Bianca tried hard, there was little success with grade 9 math during summer school. At least she was bringing home a better mark this time though. She dreaded just what her father would say when she brought home her final evaluation. There was going to be yelling.

“I don’t know what you are worried about,” Diane patronised as they sat on Bianca’s front doorstep, watching the sun go down the night before the last day of summer school. “It means you don’t have to go into basic math in September.”

“Yes, but I don’t think my parents are expecting a 60%.”

“Better than 55%.”

“True.”

The sun set, and a darkness covered the city, bats starting their flight to find their evening dinner.

“You know what would be really freaky?” Diane said. “Lets go into the cemetery! It will be fun!”

Bianca shook her head. “No. Not going to happen.”

“Come on! What’s going to happen? You’ve lived across from a cemetery all your life and you’ve never gone in there at night?” Diane asked.

Bianca shook her head again. “I know what happens in cemeteries. I know because my parents spend their nights in cemeteries.”

“Kinky.”

Bianca gave her friend a look. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What do you mean then?”

Bianca stared out into the graveyard before her and tried to make out a figure that was moving behind a mausoleum.

“I mean, that graveyards aren’t exactly safe for someone like me. There’s a lot of creatures that would like to get their hands on me.”

“Wow, you are cryptic today.”

“And you are really foolish sometimes. Did it ever occur to you that there are things out there that you don’t know anything about? My sister is a witch. My cousin and aunt are witches. That’s just the beginning of the weirdness that surrounds my family.”

“Sorry,” Diane muttered, not really understanding where the whole rant started from. “Having magical family must be cool though.”

“Oh, yeah, really cool,” Bianca muttered sarcastically.

“So how else is your family weird?” Diane asked. “I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I’m thinking you have a little more to disclose.”

Bianca was still staring out into the graveyard. The figure she was watching was walking towards them.

“I think we should go into the house,” Bianca said, standing and grabbing Diane’s hand.

Still sitting on the step, Diane didn’t budge. “Why? I like it out here.”

“Because if you don’t move your butt, you are going to find out just how weird my family is,” Bianca explained, her eyes never leaving the man that was advancing towards them.

“Right,” noted Diane, “maybe that’s going to be my only way to find out. I’ll just sit here.”

“You’ll die!” Bianca exclaimed, finally looking at her friend. “We have to go in the house!”

“I’m not going to die!”

The man was crossing the street now, and Bianca could see clearly for the first time that he was just what she thought he was, a vampire, his fangs showing, and a hungry look on his face. Bianca gave another pull at Diane’s hand and when she wouldn’t budge, Bianca dropped her friend’s hand and ran to the front door. Opening it, she screamed into the house.

“Da! Mom! Vampire!”

Diane turned to look at her friend a puzzled look on her face. It was only then that she noticed the man crossing the street.

There was a pounding of feet on the stairs, and both Spike and Buffy flew out of the house, and launched themselves at the vampire now on their lawn. It was over in a second, the fledgling standing no chance against the Slayer and master vampire.

As the fledgling exploded into dust, Diane screamed.

“You had to stay outside,” Bianca commented, annoyed. “You could have come into the house and we wouldn’t have had to deal with this. Now I’m going to get yelled at. Thanks.”

Spike and Buffy walked towards the porch, brushing the vamp dust from their clothes.

Buffy sighed before speaking. “Bianca, what is rule one when outside the house after dark?”

“Always watch the cemetery,” Bianca recited. “I was!”

“You didn’t see him coming?” Spike exclaimed.

“I did see him coming!” Bianca defended herself. “Someone refused to come in the house!” Bianca pointed at her friend.

Spike and Buffy turned their attention to Diane for a moment, who had now calmed down.

“What the hell just happened?” Diane asked. “What happened to that man? What was wrong with his face?”

“He was a vampire,” Bianca explained, sighing. “My parents fight vampires for a living.”

“Explain this to her in the house,” Buffy ordered, pointing to the door, and waiting until the two teenagers entered the house.

“This is why she should have gone home after dinner!” Spike barked. “They could have been killed. Or turned.”

“No,” Buffy argued. “Not possible. Bianca’s smarter than that. She stayed exactly where she should have. The porch, so she could call us if necessary. Diane’s just too curious for her own good. Now that B is telling her everything…well we’ll just have to wait and see.”
____________________
To Spike’s annoyance, Diane started hanging out at the house much more than usual. He’d never had to experience the full on camaraderie of teenage girls before, the ones he’d raised were less than social butterflies. Even so, he could remember Dawn’s friend Janice hanging out, but never wanting to talk with him. Mind you, he didn’t live with them then. Now, Diane was following him around the house when Bianca was occupied and asking questions.

She reminded him of Xander.

And his wife wasn’t any help. If anything, Buffy enjoyed the fact that Bianca was acting like a normal teenager. It was sort of a remembrance of happier days when the worse things that happened to her were boys not asking her out.

Mostly Spike liked to be out of the house when Diane was there. Or at least asleep, leaving his youngest to the care of her sister.

“So, that Andrew guy? He’s like your mom’s boss?” Diane asked as she and Bianca headed to the kitchen. “’Cause I’m confused, your mom is so much more together than he is.”

“He’s not the boss. He’s the watcher. He does research and stuff. He’s like an admin assistant.”

“Oh,” Diane said nodding. “’Cause he reminds me of Elliot Wibler, that geek in our science class last year.”

“The Star Wars nerd, who carries around his own lightsaber? He really does, doesn’t he?” Bianca giggled, jumping up onto the counter to sit.

“Do you think we’ll be in the same class as Mark Lloyd?” Diane asked. “He’s hot.”

“Hot, like my Da hot?” Bianca teased her friend.

“Ugh,” Diane covered her face. “I’m never going to live that one down. I take it back. He’s your father, the hotness has left. He’s way too old for me. And plus, married.”

Bianca laughed. “And my mom can totally kick your ass if you try anything.”

Rowan walked into the kitchen with a pout on her face. She didn’t say a word to the girls chatting in the kitchen but made her way towards the fridge in search of something.

“Hey, Rowan Tree,” Bianca called to her sister. “What’s with the poutage?”

“Da won’t let me have his juice.”

“Da’s juice isn’t good for little trees,” Bianca placated her sister.

“I just want to try it!” Rowan shouted. Her little hands wrenched open the fridge and took out the pitcher of red liquid labelled ‘Spike’ on it.

“Rowan,” Bianca warned, hopping down off the counter.

“No!” Rowan shouted, sticking her tongue out at her sister.

Bianca reached towards the little girl and grabbed the pitcher out of her hands, some of the red liquid spilling on the floor.

Rowan started screaming as Bianca put the pitcher on the counter, out of the little girl’s reach.

“Rowan, you are going to wake up Da. You don’t want him to be angry that you woke him.”

“I’m not afraid of the scary face,” Rowan countered, calming a bit. “I’m a witch, I’m not afraid of anything.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bianca whispered.

“Are you scared of vampires?” Diane asked.

Rowan snorted. “No!”

“Well I am,” Diane mentioned, in a whisper.
_________________________
Tbc…
Ice cream by Ariel Dawn
Author's Notes:
Thanks to the great BTL for the betaing.

Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.
“Does your Dad have to be so…I don’t know….asking questions all the time?” Diane asked as she and Bianca walked to the ice cream parlour just before sunset a week before school started.

“He’s a father that way. Plus it’s almost sunset and also they just finished saving the world…again.” The blond teen tugged at her jean jacket tighter against the impending chill.

“Really? I didn’t know that the world was in danger…”

“Well, it’s not like they have an apocalypse reporter. I think the general public would panic if they knew that the world was in jeopardy every couple of months,” Bianca commented.

“I know I would,” Diane laughed nervously. “How is it that I never knew this about you for years? I mean we were in the same kindergarten.”

“I guess it means you’re special?” Bianca suggested.

“Well my mom always did say I was special,” Diane beamed. “I guess I didn’t really realise just what for.”

“Welcome to the wild world of weird,” Bianca sighed as she opened the door to the ice cream parlour, allowing Diane to enter ahead of her. “I wonder if they have that organic strawberry they had last month…”

Bianca was cut off as she ran into Diane who had stopped short in front of the door. Looking ahead of her friend, Bianca suddenly realised that maybe going to the ice cream parlour was not a good idea tonight.

The booth facing the door held Mark Ryan, possibly the cutest boy at Bianca’s high school. Every girl in school had a crush on him. This was why Diane had stopped dead in the doorway. Bianca pushed her forward a bit.

“Don’t spaz,” Bianca hissed.

“It’s Mark Ryan,” Diane whispered, “of course I’m going to spaz.”

“Just don’t be obvious about it.”

The girls tried to walk casually towards the counter and perused the ice cream flavours available today. Or at least that’s the action Bianca was trying to demonstrate. She was very much looking at the group of boys at Mark’s table who were whispering and looking at them. Bianca’s heart skipped a beat as the whispering stopped and Mark walked towards them.

The older teenager put his arm around Bianca’s shoulders without formality and turned her towards him.

“Graves, it’s been such a long time since I saw you last. What have you been doing this summer? You haven’t been to any parties.”

Bianca blushed. Mark Ryan was talking to her. HER. If she wasn’t so busy trying to think up something cool to say she was certain that she would have melted into a puddle of goo.

“I was forcibly persuaded to languish in summer school,” Bianca finally responded, earning an envious look from Diane.

“Nasty,” Mark responded. “Have you gotten over your emo phase? ‘Cause seriously, you could hang with the right crowd if you tried.”

“Are you the right crowd?” Bianca asked.

“Always have been,” Mark boasted.

“S..s…so M…mark? What did you do this summer?” Diane ventured to say.

Mark turned and looked at Diane for a moment, clearly uncertain who she was. Diane was not on Mark’s radar. “Partied, hung out, the usual.”

“You don’t skateboard anymore?” Diane asked. “It doesn’t look like you got a lot of sun…”

It was that comment that pulled Bianca out of her daze. Yes, Mark Ryan had his arm around her, but this pallor he was sporting was slightly suspicious.

“You always used to skateboard,” Bianca commented, ducking her head out from under Mark’s arm.

“I gave it up. Found better things to do,” Mark responded. “Better people to hang out with,” he said indicating with his head his friends sitting at the booth.

Bianca looked over the friends more carefully. They were all sunless and some of them were looking a little more hungry than she liked.

“You know, Diane, I don’t think I’m hungry for ice cream after all,” Bianca said, taking Diane’s hand and pulling her towards the door. “Let’s get doughnuts instead.”

Diane pulled back. “But I want ice cream. I want to stay.

“I want you to stay too,” Mark half purred.

Bianca dropped Diane’s hand and dug into her pockets bringing out a phone and a cross, things her parents never let her leave the house without. She hit her parents’ number and pressed the cross into Mark’s face before the boy could react.

“What are you doing?” Diane asked, only to have her question answered as smoke started to come off Mark’s face. “Vampire!” The ice cream parlour filled with the screams of Diane and the cashier behind the counter.

On the phone, Buffy answered and called Bianca’s name. It was too bad that by that time Bianca had been forced to drop the phone and try to fend off Mark.

Blocks away, Buffy was instantly in her SUV and speeding towards the ice cream parlour.
___________________________

Andrew looked at the scene before him and sighed. This particular ice cream parlour was where he had met his wife. Maggie was his Princess Leia to his Han Solo. They would never be able to come back here and recall happy memories. Vampire dust covered the floor and what parts of the floor it didn’t cover were spattered with blood. The poor cashier’s blood stained the freezers. These had been fledges, they hadn’t even learned to feed properly yet. The cashier’s body was behind the counter, and Andrew felt some remorse for her death, but it was the other body that was more of a concern for him.

Bianca’s friend, Diane lay there, in a puddle of her own blood, again because the fledge that fed from her did a poor job of it.

Andrew prided himself on being an experienced watcher now, over fifteen years on the job, but this brought a tear to his eye. Soon he’d let the detective in charge of this scene into the store. These two bodies needed to be put in quarantine.

He didn’t know what was worse for Bianca, the fact that she was attacked and now in the hospital from blood loss, or the fact that when she wakes up her parents will have to tell her that her friend is dead.

The door to the store opened and Maggie stepped in.

“Done here?” she asked, her hands on her hips, her badge and gun visible on her waist.

Andrew nodded to his wife, the detective. “They’ll rise again.”

Maggie nodded. “I’ll make sure that either Buffy or Spike get a visitation at the morgue then. You’ll tell Johnny that I’ll be working late tonight?”

“Of course. He knows his mom is an important detective,” Andrew responded with pride.

“I’m going to have to tell the family,” Maggie continued. “I hate that.”
__________________________________
Buffy paced.

She paced as doctors examined her daughter.

She paced as she waited for Spike to show up at the hospital.

She paced because she hadn’t been in time to save Diane.

Finally collapsing into a chair Buffy put her head into her hands and moaned. Yes, she’d lost friends before to vampires but it seemed such a long time ago that she’d lost anyone remotely connected to her family.

Faith and Robin were the last ones to go and that was fifteen years ago.

While it had seemed ridiculous to keep Bianca and Rowan locked up at home for the rest of their lives, Buffy seriously contemplated it there and then in that hospital waiting room. It was so unfair. This was the first friend Bianca had reached out to in such a long time. The Powers were really pissing her off.

And then there was the whole how to tell Bianca issue. By the time Buffy had arrived to dust the vampires, Bianca had already lost too much blood. There was no way the fourteen year old knew that Diane was dead.

Or turned. That would be even worse.

Memories of what happened with Jesse in her first couple of weeks at Sunnydale High flooded her brain. Maybe this was a discussion Bianca needed to have with Xander.

He was the only one that knew this kind of pain.

Buffy looked up to see Spike walking through the doors to the waiting room. In an instant, Buffy was up and in his arms.

“Andrew took his bleedin’ time getting back to the house,” Spike explained. “We need a better emergency sitter.”

Buffy nodded into his shoulder. “They’re cleaning her up. We’ll be taken to her room as soon as they get her there.”

It was Spike’s turn to nod. “What should we tell Diane’s parents?”

Buffy looked up at her husband with a torn look. She’d never had to deal with grieving parents before.

“I honestly don’t know.”
_____________________________________
Bianca woke up with the sensation that someone was petting her blond hair, and an intense pain in her neck.

Flashes of what had happened to her the night before startled her out of her sleepy state. There had been vampires and hitting and blood.

“Look who’s awake,” her mom said happily as Bianca opened her eyes.

“My neck hurts,” Bianca moaned.

“It tends to do that when you get bitten by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing,” Buffy explained. “They were fledglings. You had to have stitches to close it up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault. Consider it a right of passage. We all have our vampire bites. Auntie Willow, Uncle Xander, Me, I’m not sure about Andrew though…”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I guess it doesn’t.”

“Where’s Da?” Bianca asked looking around her hospital room.

“It’s noon B,” Buffy explained, assuming it was the lack of blood that made her daughter forget that her father was confined to the house during the daylight hours. “He’s at home with Rowan.”

“Is Diane in the hospital too?”

Buffy knew that this question was coming, but still, she was unprepared. When Buffy didn’t answer right away, Bianca pulled herself up off the pillows of the hospital bed and sat up, facing her mother.

“I’m sorry Button,” Buffy whispered. “She was gone by the time I got there.”

“Gone?”

Buffy nodded, her own tears making an appearance to mirror her daughter’s.

“How can she be gone?”

Buffy sniffled and hugged her daughter, each of them mourning their loss.
______________________________
Once Bianca returned home she stayed in her room for days. Each time she passed the doorway to her eldest daughter’s room Buffy sighed. It was going to take time for Bianca to come to terms with Diane’s death. Both Spike and Buffy had tried talking to her, but clearly she wasn’t ready. As the days passed it looked like the Xander idea was getting better and better.

Her one excursion was Diane’s funeral. Appropriately the day was rainy. Buffy held Bianca’s hand through the entire service, and avoiding the eyes of Diane’s parents. The Slayer was certain that they were wondering why Bianca survived the ‘robbery’ and not Diane. Diane’s sister held a shaking umbrella over her mother as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

Only a handful of people knew that there was nothing but dust in that coffin. Skilful at entering funeral homes in the dead of night since the age of 16, Buffy dispatched Vampire!Diane before the teen even recognised her. It had taken the Slayer an hour of crying before she could go home again and face Bianca.

Bianca was to never know her friend had been vamped. At least she didn’t have that pain.

To Buffy though, this was the scene of her greatest failure. She couldn’t protect Bianca from everything. It was a harsh lesson. She could save the world, but she couldn’t mend her daughter’s heart.

They returned home in silence, and Bianca immediately went to her room, refusing food and even the offered hug from her baby sister looking to do something to cheer up her sister.

“I think I’m going to call Xander,” Buffy told Spike as she walked into the kitchen. “I don’t know anyone else that has dealt with this and not gone psycho.”

“Your pool of people with this experience is rather small, love,” Spike commented.

“He might be able to get her talking to us.”

“There’s a chance. There’s also a chance that she just needs time. You don’t’ have to fix everything all the time. There are some things you can’t fix, Slayer.”

“I didn’t get there in time and Diane died. I didn’t get to Jesse in time and he died.”

“And how did the wonder whelp deal with his loss?” Spike asked.

“He started hating vampires with a passion, even the ones that were good for me, and he became a Scooby.”

“Well I don’t think Bianca wants either of those things,” Spike offered, “I don’t want them for her either.”

Buffy nodded. “Agreed.”
_________________________
A few hours later, concerned that Bianca hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, Buffy took a plate of take out from Spike’s favourite chicken wings place up to Bianca’s room and knocked on the closed door.

“B, honey, I have some food for you. You’ve got to eat something today. Please.”

Buffy listened for a moment before pushing the door open slightly, to check what her ears were telling her. Eyes darting around the room, they confirmed what she sensed already. Bianca wasn’t in her room. Buffy stepped in, and putting the plate down, she found the note she knew would be there in the absence of her daughter.

I only want a normal life.

“SPIKE!”
______________________________________________
Tbc…
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