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.
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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.
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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.”
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“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.”
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Tbc…