**~**
Since it was in the small hours of the morning when the Scooby meeting finally broke up, everyone just stayed at the mansion for the night, sleeping in spare bedrooms or on the couch or the floor … wherever they could find a comfortable spot. Buffy rolled over and tried to focus on the bedside clock … 11:14am it said – it seemed like she’d just gone to sleep. The kids must be starving … hopefully they haven’t killed each other yet. It wasn’t until Buffy sat up that she realized Spike was already up and gone from their room … making poached eyeballs for the kids, no doubt.
Buffy got dressed and headed downstairs. She could hear her friends and family talking and laughing in the kitchen and she paused halfway down the staircase, sat down on one of the steps, and just listened. Willow was talking to Fred about some new technology she was working on and how it would change the way the world used computers, Tara was talking to Anya about the baby and the nursery and names, Spike was talking to Xander about rebuilding the transmission in the DeSoto and Xander was telling him they’d be better off pulling a used one off a junker and just replacing it, Giles and Wes and Faith were talking about what they should tell the Council about ‘the wish’, if they should tell them at all, and the children were earnestly discussing who would beat up who … Batman vs. Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman of course; Wonder Woman vs. Green Hornet – Green Hornet, they decided; Green Hornet vs. Kung Fu Panda … Huh? Kung Fu Panda? Who the hell is Kung Fu Panda?
As Buffy sat there trying to figure out who or what a ‘Kung Fu Panda’ was, the aroma of poached eyeball eggs reached her nostrils and sent her stomach into a tailspin. Buffy put her hand over her mouth and nearly jumped the rest of the way down the stairs to the first floor, barely making it into the bathroom in time. Spike heard her and everyone was waiting for her when she emerged a few minutes later, still a little green around the gills.
“You alright, luv?” Spike asked, his brows furrowed in concern as he rubbed a hand soothingly down her back. She’d been sick for several days now and it didn’t seem to be getting any better.
“Yeah … just, I don’t know … just my stomach isn’t happy with poached eyeballs, I guess,” Buffy theorized.
“Maybe it’s something else,” Tara suggested. “Maybe you’re pregnant,” she offered, remembering all too well her own morning sickness and what Buffy suffered through with her previous pregnancies … and her aura still looked a little off … but not in a bad way.
“Oh … ha ha, very funny!” Buffy replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes, but no one else was laughing.
“Guys … I’m not pregnant! I couldn’t possibly be – that’s ridiculous! I’m on the pill and Spike’s a vampire and there haven’t been any monks around and … Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and shock as her hands covered her mouth. “William … William wasn’t a vampire … I wasn’t on … I wasn’t on anything,” Buffy stammered, looking at Spike. “Rack said … he said he couldn’t protect me – whatever happened there happened to me…”
“Bloody hell…” Spike muttered, a look of amazement and joy spreading across is features.
“What does that mean, ‘William wasn’t a vampire’?” Giles asked, his brows furrowed in confusion, but Buffy didn’t hear him as her mind whirled.
Save the babies … all of them … all of them … all … her mom had admonished her as Buffy was on her way to join Spike in hell.
“All the babies … save all the babies …” Buffy muttered, her hands going to her abdomen. “B-but … it was … it wasn’t this body … it was …” Buffy stammered, trying to work through it – it was all the same dimension. Yes, she had a different body in the ‘wish-world’, but it wasn’t a different dimension, she wasn’t a different person, it was just a different set of circumstances … a different fate, it was still her.
“Oh my God, Spike …” Buffy cried, her eyes still wide with shock as she looked up at him. “I think Tara’s right … I think I’m pregnant …”
Spike pursed his lips together, then ran his tongue across his teeth as a wide smile spread across his face. “William had some brilliant swimmers … I’ll give ‘im that,” Spike bragged before grabbing her in a hug, lifting her feet off the ground and swinging her around in delight.
Dear Lord – she slept with William! Giles finally realized, taking his glasses off and scrubbing them furiously but not voicing his revelation to the group.
Tara, Willow, and Giles, the closest people to them, backed up to avoid being hit as Spike swung Buffy in a circle and all her friends began talking and asking questions at once. “What?” “Who?” “When?” “How?” “Huh?”
But neither Buffy nor Spike heard them … all Spike could hear were Buffy’s words echoing in his mind, I’m pregnant, and all Buffy could hear were Spike’s vows of everlasting love and devotion whispered softly against her ear, his voice full of emotion and his heart swelling with elation over the possibility of another baby.
When Spike finally set Buffy back down on her feet, he leaned down and kissed her gently. His eyes danced with joy and he couldn’t wipe the silly grin off his face as he pressed a palm against her abdomen.
“Can you hear it?” Buffy asked him, laying her hand over his.
Spike shook his head. “Not yet … How long ‘as it been? Just since the buggering blue demon?”
Buffy shook her head trying to clear her thoughts. “Yeah … we were together that night and then the next morning I woke back up here – you said I had been attacked by a blue demon. So just, umm … like a week?”
“Would someone please tell the mushrooms what’s going on?” Xander asked, still confused, his request finally being heard by the warriors. “I’m pretty used to living in the dark, but every once in a while I’d like to know what the f…iddlesticks is going on!”
Buffy pulled her eyes away from Spike’s to look at her friends, who were all waiting expectantly. “I stepped on a butterfly and saved all our babies.”
**~**
If Tomorrow Never Comes
By Ronan Keating from the movie: P.S. I Love You
Originally by Garth Brooks
{{Click here to hear "If Tomorrow Never Comes” on YouTube }}
Sometimes late at night
I lie awake and watch her sleeping
She's lost in peaceful dreams
So I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark
And the thought crosses my mind
If I never wake up in the morning
Would she ever doubt the way I feel
About her in my heart
If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she's my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face the world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes
'Cause I've lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed
So I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there's no second chance to tell her how I feel
If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she's my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face the world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes
So tell that someone that you love
Just what you're thinking of
If tomorrow never comes