Renewal

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon et al own everyone in this story except Lexie, Gab and Tara, because those three are mine all mine.

Distribution: The Mystic Muse http://mysticmuse.net

If you want it, please ask me first.

Spoilers: None

Feedback: Please!

Pairing: Willow/Buffy

Dear Diary

Okay, wow, I just found this diary under a pile of clothes—Mom's making me clean my room—and I realized I haven't written in this thing since just after we moved here, the day I found out Buffy wasn't the Slayer any more. That was the same day I found out I was gonna be a big sister. I guess so many things have happened since then that I haven't really had time to adjust or write anything down.

I'll talk about school first, because it's the least confusing topic. I started school here in Sunnydale in the special ed classes like I was in before, but after a couple of months I convinced my teacher to retest me, to see if I could be put in a couple of regular classes. I was and still am very anxious to not be taking any special classes. She tested me and decided I could go into a regular math class and a regular geography class, because those two would require the least amount of reading and I wasn't quite on a seventh-grade reading level yet. I've been working really hard since then. Math is hard, but I kind of like it, because the problems are like puzzles that you have to work out. Geography is really easy -it's mostly just map skills, but there's also a lot of memorizing things going on, too.

Mom blew it, though—when we left our place to come here, it was spring of my seventh-grade year. When we got here, it was the previous fall. So I'm practically having to repeat the seventh grade a third time! I was so mad when I realized what happened, but what can you do? You jump into the time stream, mistakes happen. But I did get to have Halloween and Christmas over again, which was fun.

The thing about school that blows my mind... it's like this. Where I'm from, I'm pretty much dumb as a brick. Mom doesn't like to admit it—she says I'm street smart and talks a lot about common sense and other things that basically mean I've got enough brains to survive but not enough to read or write. But when I came here for the first time, a year or so ago, and spent the summer and helped Buffy with a demon, I was different. Let me explain.

I first realized I was different here when I picked up a book at the Magic Box and flipped through it for pictures of demons and realized I was able to puzzle out the words without much trouble. So I sat down with the thing at the research table and started reading it from the very beginning. I had some trouble with some of the larger words, so I got Giles to help me with them. But when he realized how much I wanted to learn things, he started finding things for me to learn about. He started teaching me some Latin and some French, different things about demons, stuff that he said I could learn "by rote"—that means by saying things over and over to memorize them.

When I went home at the end of the summer, Mom picked me up some old language texts so that I could keep on studying French and Latin, but it was much harder at home, and things that I could read in Sunnydale, I couldn't read at home. It was very frustrating. I didn't forget anything, though. So when I came back, Giles started up again teaching me the same way as before. I think it's like this: I was reading this series about a place called Narnia. It starts out with a book called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. These kids go to Narnia and they become kings and queens, but when they come back, no time has passed and they're just regular kids again. But as soon as they go back to Narnia, they start to be kings and queens again. Sunnydale is like my Narnia. When I'm in Sunnydale, I'm smart.

Mom's also working extra-hard with me on my magick studies. She says I really need to know good magick now because there are a lot of people running around this dimension who deal in the dark magicks and I need to be able to guard myself against them. She told me a story about when she was in high school and an evil mage named Ethan Rayne put a spell on some candy that made all the adults act like teenagers. I kind of wished I could have been there to see that. Buffy got all flustered when Mom was telling this story, something about Giles and a police car, but somehow I don't think I'm ever going to get that story out of anybody.

So those are the things I'm studying. I'm also still boarding, and Toby from down the street still boards with me. We go to the skate park down Hadley sometimes. But Ricky, who lived next door to Toby when I first moved here, is gone. He and his mom and little brother moved away after his dad got killed by vampires. The tooth I knocked out that first day grew back in just fine, but the dentist says I might need braces this summer because of my overbite. Toby said I could bite an apple through a picket fence, but he only said it once, and he apologized pretty quickly when I introduced his face to the sidewalk.

So, the next thing I want to talk about is Buffy. She's kind of like my stepmom now, but it makes her feel old when she thinks about it, so I don't bring it up except to tease her. Mostly she just acts like my big sister, only nice to me, not mean and hateful like Tara always was. She used to be the Slayer, of course, but she's not any more. She and Giles and my mom did a spell that made her not the Slayer any more, so now she's retired and lives a mostly normal life. It makes her happy. But when she became not the Slayer, she got something else instead—pregnant. Giles says it has to do with balances in the universe, but apparently it's pretty complicated.

Well, when Buffy retired, there was only one active Slayer left—Faith. Now, Faith used to be bad news, and I never could get anyone to tell me exactly what happened, but I'm very persistent—mom says stubborn—and eventually I got what I wanted. Faith was in jail in L. A., but the Council got her pardoned and her record expunged so she could be let out and be the Slayer and protect the Hellmouth. She came to us first thing, to let us know she was there. I'll never forget. We were sitting at the table having supper: me, Dawn, Buffy, Mom, and Giles. The doorbell rang, and I jumped up to go get it. I opened the door and there was this woman standing there, fine as life with long, wavy dark hair and this nauseated look on her face. I kinda stared at her for a second and then I was like, "Are you gonna throw up? 'Cause, if you are, can you do it in the grass?"

She looked at me and kinda laughed, and then she chilled out a little and she asked if Bea still lived there, and I was like Bea who? And she said Bea Summers, and I was like well Buffy and Dawn live here, but Bea doesn't live here, and then she explained that she didn't mean Bea, she meant B, which is what she calls Buffy. So then I said come in and asked her if she'd had supper and she said no, so I told her I'd get her a plate and go on in.

I must've been having a stupid day, because I didn't even realize what was going on around me when I came into the dining room with a glass of iced tea and a big piece of roast on a plate for her and made her sit down and eat... but then I started to pick up on the cold and uncomfortable silence, and I realized that Mom had gone pale and Buffy had two bright red patches on her cheeks, and Dawn was looking at me like she was ready to kill me. I looked at Giles for help, and he cleared his throat and was like, pass Faith some beans, she looks hungry.

And then everything kind of calmed down a little bit, and Faith explained that she was back and she was here to guard the Hellmouth, Council's orders. She said something about how the things that happened before would not happen again, and that she wouldn't bother us, but that she just wanted us to know. And by the time she was done talking, Giles was nodding, Mom had some color in her face and Buffy's face had calmed down a little, but Dawn had stormed off upstairs and slammed her door.

She chewed me out later, like I was supposed to have known something about who Faith was, and I told her so, and a couple of other things, too, and we got into a nasty screaming match that I won when I cussed her out, but Mom heard me from downstairs and I got grounded for using the F word fourteen times in six minutes.

So once I was off being grounded, the first thing I did was go find Faith, because Mom told me not to and because she seemed really interesting. I found her at a motel on the edge of town, a crappy little joint with roaches and nasty water. And that's when I got the idea that she oughta be getting paid. And I said so. And she looked at me like I'd lost my mind, but I had an idea. I made absolutely sure she was completely pardoned and her record was completely expunged—did I mention I'm good with computers? Got that from my mom. And then I told Faith to tell the Council that she didn't work for free. The upshot of it was that they ended up paying her almost two grand a month and she got this sweet little loft apartment downtown and I started hanging out with her a lot.

Buffy runs a karate dojo downtown and I've got a green belt, but I blew it when I tested for that belt because I used a move that Faith had taught me, and Buffy knew it immediately. That got me grounded again, for two whole weeks! But when the two weeks were over, I was allowed to hang with Faith as long as I said that's where I was going. I think that's because they knew I'd go anyway, whether they gave me permission or not.

And Buffy got pregnant. Did I mention that? OH MY GOD! Dawn and I were way surprised. I mean, who'd have expected that? But here's what was even wilder—when the baby came, we were all expecting a girl because of the lack of Y chromosome, but I guess deities can do whatever they want to do. They told me I could name the baby and I picked Chloe Ysabelle, because it sounds so pretty and it looked really good written down in cursive. And then when the baby came, it was a boy!

I was kind of disappointed, because I was really hoping for a sister to corrupt, but then it occurred to me that brothers kind of come already corrupted, so I wasn't so disappointed. Then I realized it had taken me six months to come up with a name for a girl baby, and I started to wonder how in the world I was going to come up with a name for a boy. But Faith had an idea—she said I should look in my favorite book and find the name of my favorite guy character for the first name, and flip through the phone book for a name that I liked for the middle name. So I did that.

I was right in the middle of reading a series about a boy named Garion, and it was quickly becoming my favorite story ever, so I picked Garion for the first name, and then I started flipping through the phone book, but I never really saw anything that I liked; so I started paying attention to guys' names in the world around me. I had a heck of a time finding one that I liked that fit with Garion. And then, just this morning, I realized who I wanted to name him after.

I went into the baby's room and looked at him. I said his name out loud, all three names, and he smiled at me and waved his little arms. I picked him up and got his blanket and carried him downstairs with me, saying his name over and over to him, and he babbled a little bit at me and I knew he liked it. Mom and Buffy were on the back porch soaking up the sun, and we came outside. I said hey, and they said hey, and Buffy asked if Little Nameless had been crying. I said no, we were communing. I took him out onto the grass, laid his blanket out and laid him on it and played with him for a little bit, tickling him with bits of grass and flowers off the azalea bushes.

"Any closer to a name?" Mom asked from the porch. I didn't have to look up to know that she and Buffy were holding hands.

I nodded. "His name is Garion."

They were both surprised and wanted to know where I got that from, so I told them about the book. Mom got that proud look on her face that she gets whenever I talk about reading or I come home with good grades. Buffy grinned and asked about a middle name. So I told them. I named him Garion Harris Summers. I wanted to name him after Xander, but I was afraid it would look like I was naming him after me, since my middle name's Alexis, even though I'm named after Xander, too. So I thought about Xander's middle name, but that's Lavelle, and I wouldn't inflict that on somebody I hated, much less my baby brother. So I picked Harris, 'cause that's not quite so bad.

I said it again to him, "Garion Harris Summers," and he sneezed. Buffy laughed and said maybe he liked it. But I knew he did.

/He likes it a lot,/ I said to Mom, in my head the way we do.

/How do you know?/ she asked me back.

/Talk to him. He doesn't know very many words yet but he's learning them really fast./

And he is. He's learning words really fast. He's only four days old and he already knows my name and Dawn's name, and he knows Mom and Mom, but he gets kind of confused about which Mom is which. We haven't really worked that out yet. He's really smart, though.

Mom talked to him a little bit, and made him squeal out loud, and in his head I heard him say /Mommy!/ But Mom told him no, that Buffy is his mommy. And then he said /who?/ and Mom looked at me like, what now?

So I thought about it for a minute, and then I said, /What about Aunt Willow?/ and Mom was like, it'll do, but he didn't like it—he said /Lolo!/ and I had to laugh, and I thought it was perfect. So he started calling her Lolo.

He's really cute. He has Buffy's face, but he has my mom's nose; and he has Buffy's green eyes and my mom's red hair. He really looks like my brother. It's really cool. I've started telling him about boarding and school and stuff, and all the things I'm going to teach him to do when he gets a little older. And he listens and he gets excited, especially when I show him in my head how to do boarding tricks and stuff. And I'm going to tell him all about the monsters, too, and teach him how to fight, and we can be a demon hunting team when he's older, and help Faith do her Slayer duties.

But I don't think I'll tell him about all that just yet. I don't want to give him bad dreams.

To be continued...

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