Disclaimer: Joss owns the BTVS characters. I own Reagan and Annette.

Author’s note: Once again I thank the fabulous BTL for the betaing of this story. Living Vengeance has been honoured by so many nominations that I am truly astounded and I grateful to everyone who’s been reading and leaving me feedback! Thanks so much!
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Chapter 15: Precious Bundle.

The weeks and months that passed found the Vengeance Demon and her maid traversing the country that Annette had been so eager to visit. With each new stop, and with each new town that they lodged in, Buffy sent Reagan an update on where she was and asked for news of what was going on in the lives of the Prices.

But no news came, ever. Buffy tried to explain it away, tried to convince herself that Reagan was so busy being a wife and a Watcher, or that none of her letters had actually made it to England, or that the Watcher’s Council was tampering with Reagan’s mail. However, as months passed, Buffy started to feel like Reagan had abandoned her too.

Buffy was seven months pregnant and extremely irritable when she finally decided to do something about Regan’s lack of correspondence. From her very ornate house in Victoria, Buffy teleported into the Price’s dining room.

In the middle of tea.

In the middle of tea Reagan was hosting for the ladies of the Council.

Buffy rolled her eyes at her bad luck, as the screaming started and the whole lot of them brought out spell books, crosses, stakes and a few daggers to use against her. She thanked her own presence of mind to teleport in using her demonic face. Among the crowd were quite a few of the faces she recognised from her days in London.

Quickly, Buffy grabbed Reagan’s hand and opened a portal, stepping through it with her friend before any of the ladies could react.

“Bloody hell Buffy!” screamed Reagan as she wrenched herself out of her friend’s grasp. “Just what do you mean by barging into my home! You could have been killed! You could have been recognised! Oh my God! Are you pregnant?”

Buffy slipped out of her demonic face and brushed her newly bleached locks behind her ear. “You haven’t been answering my letters! It’s been months Reagan! What was I to think?”

“You were to think to stop sending them to me! The Council is looking for you! The Demon Erixel is first on the list of most wanted demons right now. Even D’Hoffryn is lower on the list than you are. They’ve already sent people to Ottawa and to Calgary trying to locate you!”

“Oh,” huffed Buffy as she sat heavily on the bed that adorned her room in Arashamahar.

“When did you get pregnant Buffy?” Reagan asked quietly.

“Same night you got married,” Buffy answered, but didn't dare look up at her friend.

“Who’s the father?”

“Well, Anyanka is laying odds that it belongs to William. Krevlin’s of the opinion that it’s the Immortal’s and I am waiting to see what pops out.” She offered a wry smile to Reagan, who quickly sat down and wrapped an arm around her.

“Oh Buffy! I’m so sorry. There was talk that the Immortal had fathered a child, the Council is worried what sort of mischief would be going on in Rome once the child was born. I didn’t know you were the mother!”

“Ya my life is just a ball.”

“You aren’t married to William though? Right?” she asked.

Buffy shook her head.

Reagan sighed with relief. “I had really hoped that you weren’t...He’s back with Drusilla.”

“Well I knew that much,” Buffy replied, but her eager expression told Reagan she was dieing for any bit of information.

“They’ve moved on to Venice. And the Slayer has been killed. The new one is in Siam.”

Silence filled the room as the two friends stared at the wall, each lost in their own thoughts.

“So...How have you been?” asked Buffy as if nothing had happened.

“Happy. Arthur is wonderful, I love my home, I love my job. But I miss my best friend,” said the Watcher with hopeful eyes.

Buffy gave a sigh, her eyes welling up with tears. “I can’t go back to England Reagan and there is no way I can be a Watcher. I can’t live the life you want me to. I’m a demon.”

“I know,” Reagan sniffled. “I just miss my friend.”
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As Buffy watched her friend go through the portal, back into her house, she couldn’t help but think that she and Reagan were never going to have the kind of friendship they once had. With a heavy heart, Buffy opened a portal for herself, returning back to her Victoria home.

She knew that having a child was going to be much more complicated if she didn’t have Reagan around to comfort her. Her heart broke just a little more at the though that she was on her own.

A part of what Reagan said scared her. Watchers were looking for her, and they seemed to know where she was going. She didn’t know if it was because someone was tipping them off or if it was because they had spies everywhere. She was going to have to move again.

With a curt command to Annette to get the trunks packed, Buffy sat down on the couch and observed the teenager who had been her constant companion for a little over a year now. She didn’t deserve this transient life. She didn’t deserve to be chased across continents.

She deserved a life. A life like one that was taken away from me, thought Buffy. Buffy absently placed her hand on her protruding belly. She had to go somewhere safe for her child, somewhere safe for Annette. But the one place she thought was safe, was not. Home, England, would never be safe again.
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Their new home was Los Angeles. It was bright and warm and Buffy couldn’t think of a better place for her child to grow up. She sincerely wished that she could stay here. But somehow, she knew she would be driven from this place too.

The widow, Buffy Summers, recently from England and her maid Annette were an oddity in the posh neighbourhood Buffy had chosen, but an eccentric widow was tolerated in the booming town.

“Moved again?” came Anyanka’s voice.

Buffy looked up from her position on the couch. She had gotten so large that she felt like a whale, a fat beached whale.

“Oh it’s you,” Buffy said with a little wave of her hand.

“Oh D’Hoffryn, you are fat!” exclaimed Anyanka.

“Oh thank you Anyanka, I didn’t know!” Buffy snapped.

“No need to be sarcastic, Erixel” she chastised as she flopped down on the couch beside her friend. “You need to get out of this house! No one has seen you for a month! You haven’t been getting wishes. You've just been sitting here like whale, a fat fat whale!”

Buffy exhaled in annoyance.

“I haven’t left the house Anyanka because I’m so pregnant. D’Hoffryn told me that I didn’t have to meet my quota for another six months.”

“That’s no reason to stay locked in this house.”

“Uh, Watchers after me?” Buffy reminded her friend with a stare, as though it should have been obvious why she was sitting on her ass.

“And so why are you here?" Anya questioned, waving her hands around dramatically. "You have a perfectly good home in Arashamahar or are you so in love with this dimension that you have forgotten ours?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten Anyanka! But I have a responsibility to my child and to Annette. I can’t let them live there.”

“Far too attached to your maid Erixel, she’s a human, she’s a liability.”

“She has no one else Anyanka!”

“And sometimes I wonder if you kept that pesky soul or not," she wondered aloud before she dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand. "Anyways, Filgar is getting married and he told me that he wanted you at the wedding. He didn’t know where to send your invitation.”

“So when is his wedding?”

“Nowish,” said Anyanka rising to her feet and grabbing Buffy’s hand. “And you are coming. Whether you look like a whale or not.”

“Now?” asked Buffy in a slightly panicked voice. “I can’t go now, I’m a mess!”

“Oh please, you are much prettier than the bride. No one will notice the bags under your eyes or your swollen ankles. Now up up!”

With a groan Buffy rose from the couch, wincing as she put pressure on her swollen ankles. She so didn’t want to go to a wedding, but the firm grip on her upper arm told her that Anyanka was not going to take no for an answer.

“It’s time to get you out of this rut, Erixel. Life is so much more exciting when you are actually living it.”
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Buffy stood off to the side of D’Hoffryn’s audience chamber uncomfortable with her body, with the place she was standing, and with the people that surrounded her. Anyanka hadn’t wasted a moment announcing her presence at the wedding and just whom she had managed to bring along with her. Buffy could feel the stares from the various demons that were populating the room.

The baby in her belly gave a kick causing her to flinch slightly. At the front of the room, D’Hoffryn was binding Filgar and Tre’fiol together in marriage. The bride’s maids were wearing the traditional burlap and blood larva, and trying to catch the eye of the single demons in the congregation. It was a stark contrast to Reagan’s wedding and she felt supremely out of place.

Supremely out of place and in a great deal of pain. She gasped as realisation set in. Her baby was coming now. The crowd of wedding guests turned to look at her, clutching her stomach. She growled at Anyanka, who was standing next to her and lowered herself to the ground. This baby was coming now. She only wished that Spike was there to help her through it.

“Erixel? What are you doing on the ground?” asked Anyanka curiously.

“Anya!” Buffy screamed, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Well it looks like you are having a baby actually. Please tell me you aren’t having a baby Rixy! This is an inappropriate time!”
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By the time that Erixiel, Vengeance Demon scourge of neglectful parents delivered her baby, the wedding guests had cleared out. Anyanka and D’Hoffryn had stayed behind to make sure the delivery was a safe one. Anyanka didn’t want to lose her friend nor D’Hoffryn his bragging point.

The curses that had issued from Buffy’s mouth had been too good to give up, D’Hoffryn had thought and granted her wishes on the spot, mid labour.

The Immortal had developed a terrible case of genital herpes, Miranda Travers-Giles suddenly put on 20 pounds, Reagan Wyndham-Price became pregnant, Anyanka was destined to fall in love with a human, and Spike would abandon his Sire for his human family.

D’Hoffryn chastised himself for not paying more attention to the curses that women in labour uttered.

Anyanka laid the baby boy in his mother’s arms, words of blessing whispered over the pair of them.

“He’s beautiful Rixy,” whispered Anyanka. “He doesn’t look anything like the Immortal.”

A wondrous smile lit up on Buffy’s face. She was never more grateful for her friend than right now.

“But will the Immortal claim this child as his own anyway?” asked D’Hoffryn.

Buffy looked up with horror at her boss. Dozens of scenarios passed through her head, none of them good.

“Would he really want to take my little boy away?” she asked with trepidation, clutching at her baby.

D’Hoffryn and Anyanka looked at each other for a moment before answering her. That was all the response she needed. Her little boy. Hers and William’s. She needed to keep him safe. And she had to tell William.

“Have you named him yet? Or are you going to let the orphanage do that?” asked Anyanka.

Buffy looked up at her friend, shocked that Anya would even think of such a thing. Erixel, scourge of neglectful parents was not going to leave her child in the care of an orphanage.

“You aren’t seriously thinking about keeping him? Erixel, the Immortal will be at you at once the moment he finds out you have given birth. He may know already. D’Hoffryn knows just what he has in mind for the baby. Probably a sacrifice of some sort.”

D’Hoffryn raised his hands defensively. “Hey, I know nothing,” he protested.

“I can’t abandon him, he’s a little part of me. He’s a little human, that I thought I’d never see, that I’d never get to have,” cooed Buffy.

The baby opened his eyes, and stared at his mother with the bright blue orbs that declared his lineage. He was a Fairchilde alright.

Buffy stood with the help of her friends and was escorted back to her lair by D‘Hoffryn‘s minions. She settled on her bed, infant in hand and fell asleep.
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tbc...