CONCEPT: What if a Slayer had a child?

SETTING: 1885-1887 and 1902

MY NOTES: Originally this fic was meant to be for the story "Leta and Julian", but I went elsewhere with that story. I still liked the idea of a pregnant Slayer so I wrote this one (after putting it off and putting it off for like, two, maybe three months) And yes, I did get the idea for the Lilliad demons from the Angel eppy "Dad". I'm thinking if they wanted a baby for their spells, a Slayer's child could be interesting to use.

"Tell me about her again." Emmaline asked, leaning back against her father's chest, her jewel bright eyes wide as she looked at the gray headstone before her. A rosary was draped in the upraised arms of the stone angel perched atop the grave.

"Again?" Jacob Weatherby asked, his eyebrows rising as she looked down at his daughter. She smiled and nodded her brown head, a lock of this brown hair falling over her cheeks. "Okay."

"It was a dark and stormy night when I met your mother. She didn't know what she was back then and I was a very young, very headstrong Watcher...."

"Emmaline St. Claire?" Jacob asked, adjusting his wire rim glasses and peering through the rain at the beautiful young woman before him.

"Yes? May I help you?" Emmaline answered, her smile wide as she looked at the young Englishman before her, his French slightly accented.

"I need you to come with me." Jacob said, dark green eyes boring into hers as he grabbed her by the elbow.

"Excuse me, sir but I'm afraid I do not know you and I will not go anywhere with you!" Emmaline said, her rosy lips turning down into a frown.

"But you must, you must stop the vampires!" Jacob whispered in her ear. Her mouth fell open and she stared at him, eyes wide.

The vampire toppled over the headstone, his back cracking in two as she slammed the heavy mallet into his stomach. Eighteen-year-old Emma smiled as she heard the bone within splinter. She swung again and broke his jaw, borrowed blood fountaining from the wounds.

"Enough. Finish him!" Jacob called from his perch atop the next headstone, black lock of hair falling across his face. Emma beamed at him and flipped the mallet over in her hand. A second later the pointed end of the handle into the vampire's chest and was rewarded by an explosion of ash.

"Ee iz ded." Emma said in her heavily accented English as she hefted the mallet again.

"Yes and you were playing with him before you ended it. You must always remember that these fiends were once human and they should be put out of their misery. They are not mice and you are not a cat." Jacob admonished her, brow furrowed as he took the mallet out of her hands, surprised at how much it weighed. She held it like it was a stake and not made of heavy wood and iron.

"I know ziss, Jacob, boot I find eet 'ard to control my eenstincts wit zeem." She said, brown eyes troubled as she tried to get her message across.

"French." Jacob told her, knowing her English was still developing and it was hard for her to say what she wanted with so limited a vocabulary.

"When I am fighting, it's like I become this animal and all I can see is the kill. And I want the kill, I hunger for it." She said in one long thought, her mouth forming the words she had previously been unable to say.

"You are the Slayer and the kill is your nature. But you have to understand what I am trying to teach you. A clean kill is better than a cruel kill. Send their souls to heaven and end their torment."

"I do understand that Jacob, but the hunger.....I've only felt a hunger like that with..."

"With?" Jacob turned green eyes on her and she felt the world melting away, a different kind of hunger taking up residence in her chest. She swallowed and forced the thoughts from her mind.

"With nothing. It's nothing." Emma smiled and pushed past her Watcher, willing herself to stop thinking things like that. It wasn't proper and he was twelve years her senior. He would never....She sighed and looked up at the moon.

"You didn't know she was falling in love you, did you? Did you love her?" Emmaline asked, her eyes far away as she thought about all the romance threading through Paris and touching her life.

"From the moment I laid eyes on her, pet. She was marvelous and I was too blinded by duty to see she felt the same. Until one night, another dark and stormy one, mind you." Jacob went on, swiping a thumb over his daughter's cheek and smiling.

**************

Rain beat down on Emmaline's face, droplets coursing down her cheeks and mingling with the salty tears there. She gasped for breath, the wound in her side blinding her with pain. She ignored it as best she could and cradled her Watcher's head in her lap.

"Jacob! Please wake up!" Emma begged the fallen figure, a bloody bruise blossoming on his forehead from where the Tal'eka demon had thrown him into the wall. She swiped at the wound and found a talon still imbedded in the skin. With a grunt, she pulled the black nail from the wound and pressed her palm to it to stop the bleeding. "Jacob!"

She called his name for several minutes before his eyes fluttered open, feverishly bright and fixed on her face. "Emmaline, my dear....I'm afraid I've been hit."

"You stupid man, of course you were hit! The Tal'eka could have sliced you open from neck to knee and what do you do? Step between me and him! I don't know whether to kill you or kiss you!"

"Kiss me!" His voice was tight as he begged her with his eyes. She smiled, heart racing, and bent down, planting a chaste kiss on his lips. It only stayed chaste for a moment before he claimed her lips for his own, his hands caressing her face and her body wrapping around his.

He pulled back a moment later, his eyes horrified at what he had done. "I'm...I'm sorry Emma....I have no right..." In answer, she crushed her lips to his once more, stilling any protests he had.

"You became lovers!" The fourteen-year-old giggled, her lips stretching into a familiar grin. Jacob's heart ached as he watched his daughter, so much like her mother it tore him in two to look at her sometimes.

"Yes we did, and you shouldn't speak of such things. It isn't proper!" Jacob admonished her half-heartedly. She nodded her head and poked him in the ribs to keep him telling the story. "We became lovers and that was when our lives were turned upside and shaken inside out."

Jacob rolled over, his legs twisted in the sheets, a warm hand pressed to his chest. He met a pair of familiar brown eyes and smiled. "Good morning my love."

"I'm pregnant."

"What?" Jacob exploded, his eyes going wide and his mouth falling open. He sat up in the bed and looked over at the Slayer, her mouth turned up at his reaction.

"I'm pregnant. The doctor has already been here yesterday and confirmed it. We are going to have a child, Jacob." Emma said, sitting up and placing his hand on her flat stomach.

"But...but you cannot fight while you're with child! The city will be Slayerless." He protested, his shock coming out in a Watcher's response and not a father's.

"I know. But I will not give the child up. Not when I love it's father so much. Do you want me to have it?" Her eyes were full of hurt, the skin beneath his palm quivering as she controlled her emotions. He was silent a moment before he spoke once more, the father taking over and the Watcher rolling out of the way.

"I could think of nothing else I would want more. But...there is still the matter of the Watcher's Council. I'm afraid they won't approve." He said slowly, a smile claiming his mouth, but his eyes deadly serious.

"Approve of the child or us?" She asked, eyebrow arching as she lifted his palm to her cheek.

"Both. But it doesn't matter. They are in London and we are in Paris. They don't have to know until after the birth. No one does; I'll patrol for you." Jacob said, rubbing her smooth cheek and feeling a tear glisten at the corner of her eye.

"No, it's too dangerous! I couldn't live if something happened to you."

"And I could not live if something happened to you and our child! I am still your Watcher and my word is law." He said sternly, gathering her up and kissing her forehead.

"Of course Mr. Weatherby." Emma replied, grinning hard and kissing him passionately.

"So you took over for Mother and she settled down to have me. And when did the really big trouble start?" Emma asked, as if she didn't know.

"We started getting an inkling that the forces of darkness knew the Slayer was...inconvienced for a while in her seventh month. But we had no idea who or what was after her." Jacob supplied her, his words soothing and far away. He thought back to that time once more and felt his heart break all over again.

"They know and something is looking for you!" Jacob protested to his hugely pregnant Slayer. She frowned up at him and patted her round stomach absently.

"Let them come! I am not afraid!" Emma protested, her plump lips turning into a determined frown.

"You should be, if not for yourself but for the child inside you. If they get you, then they'll kill you and her." Jacob said, his hands fisted to his sides.

"Her? You've never called it a her before...."

"I..I guess it just felt right. Do you suppose it'll be a girl?" He said hopefully, sitting down on the davenport next to her and touching her linen-covered belly.

"Anything is possible and if it felt right, then I will not stop you from calling her that. I have felt that it was a she for a while now, but I didn't want to say anything for fear that you would think I was having womanly vapors." Emmaline said, smiling with a teasing glint in her eyes.

"Womanly vapors? You? Never!" He retorted, holding her hand and patting her belly again. The child inside moved and he jumped, surprised once again. "I always jump when she does that..."

Emma laughed and leaned her head back against the cushion, her eyes on the starlight outside the window of their lavish apartments. "Do you suppose I'll live to see her grow up?"

"Of course! Don't ever think you won't!" Jacob said vehemently, his mouth dropping open and his hands clenched around hers.

"I worry sometimes that I will die before I ever see her face. I...I even dream of it."

Jacob's blood ran cold as she spoke and he remembered an aspect of the Slayer that she had yet to exhibit; the prophetic dreams. He stood, fear making his voice tremble. "They are just dreams. Think nothing of them."

"You didn't tell her."

"I didn't." He sighed and looked down at the stone angel. "I was afraid for her. And then I encountered the Lilliad's the night of the birth. And I knew. I knew."

"It is so cold out dear, come inside!" Emma beckoned him from the bed and he stumbled in, arm bleeding, blood dripping onto the floor. "Jacob! What happened!"

He fell to his knees in front of her, his face pressed to her straining belly. "They're coming for you!"

"Who? What happened?"

"The Lilliad demons! They want the Slayer's child and they're going to kill you for it! We have to leave, now! I barely got away and they're right behind me!"

With that, he climbed to his feet and grabbed her, pulling her out of the violated safety of the apartment and into the winter cold. Down the street, he aimed for the carriage he had left outside the apartment, his booted feet slipping in the snow. "Jacob, slow down!"

He ignored her protests and quickened his pace, all but throwing her into the back of the carriage before hopping up onto the buckboard and jerking the reigns. The horses started off immediately, their breath curling out of their nostrils as they manuevered down the street.

Jacob looked up and saw the full moon shining down on them. His heart sank to his knees as he remembered that the Lilliad's power was based on the moon. If they caught them, then they were doomed.

Suddenly, a blast of power slammed into the racing horses, dropping them in mid-step. The smell of charred animal flesh burned his nose and he looked down at the trap he had ridden into. Lilliad's surrounded them, closing in on the Slayer and her Watcher.

"Emmaline!" He screamed as a blast was shot at him from the side. He ducked just as the pregnant Slayer hopped out of the carriage, her face sweating. He knew immediately that she had gone into labor from the wet trail on her dress; her water had broken.

"Jacob...I..." She gasped, collapsing in the snow, her eyes rolling back in her head. A Lilliad was on her in a second, purple robes swirling, power crackling across it's skin. Jacob jumped down from the carriage and swung at the demon.

The fight was a long one, Jacob getting more than one hit from the Lilliad's, his wounds dripping onto the white snow. Three Lilliad's were dead from the sword Jacob had stashed in his long cloak. Two left, they circled him, power crackling. Before he knew what was happening, a blast hit the fallen Slayer, lifting her in the air and slamming her back against the carriage.

With a swipe of the sword, Jacob took off the Lilliad's head and turned to the other one, the smell of charred flesh in his notrils once again. The Lilliad fell beneath the Watcher's blade and slumped to the ground.

"Emmaline!" Jacob fell to his knees next to the Slayer and took his beloved's hand in his own. "Speak to me!"

"I'm dying...." Her voice was a whisper and her body covered in burns and black flesh. "We're going to die." She took out a knife and pressed it into his palm.

"What...?"

"Cut her out of me......"

"No!"

"She'll die if you don't. I can't birth her now. Too much..."

"I'm so sorry. We should have gone sooner when we knew they had found out! My love, please..."

"Not your fault. Please...save her. Tell her about me..." With that, her eyes rolled up in her head and her lips were still. Jacob screamed and stared at her, his hand on the round belly. He jumped when he felt movement under his palm. His eyes widened and he lifted the knife..

"God forgive me." He whispered and cut into the skin he loved so much.

Jacob was silent as he stared at the headstone before him. Emmaline clutched onto his arm and buried her head into his shoulder. "You saved my life."

"But not hers." He responded, eyes clouded with pain.

"She knew what she was in for as the Slayer. We all know. And you tried to save her, but you're not God."

"No, I'm not. But if I had just...."

"If you had just done a lot of things. If you dwell on the what if's you will never see the past for what it was. You loved each other so much, Father and I am the result of that. I know if she was here now, she'd tell you the same." Emmaline said, looking into her father's eyes.

Jacob smiled down at his daughter and nodded, the pain still so fresh after so many years. But it was healing with the presence of the little one before him, so much like her mother and yet so much like him. She was perfect.

"So, are you ready to start again?" He asked, turning away from the headstone and smiling down at her.

Emmaline picked up her stake and smiled widely. "Always ready, Watcher."

Pride swelled in his chest and he looked down at his little Slayer-in-Waiting. She would make a good Slayer one day, if she were ever to be chosen.

He prayed she wouldn't.

THE END.