Chapter 19

It was 6:27pm when Ava went into labor, sitting at dinner with her family.

The family itself had grown in leaps and bound in the last few years. Dawn had adopted Jonas and his friends, Spike had returned to the fold, with Vi in tow, and Ava herself had come. With all of that plus the birth of AJ and the impending arrival of quite a few more, things were getting crowded.

So it was that they were gathered in the large dining room of the Rest eating the huge meal that Andrew had made for them. Giles was sitting at one end of the large table with AJ on his lap. Jenny and Jon were sitting on one side of him while Willow and Cassie were on the other. Jonas sat at the other end of the table with Dawn on his left side and Spike and Vi on his right. Buffy and Xander were next to Dawn and Andrew and Ava were next to Vi. The only one missing was Faith, who had gone to Roswell to help her friends, but was sorely missed by her family.

Everyone was having a great time. Small conversations here and there with larger loud ones overlapping them. Laughs and smiles all around. Suddenly Ava stiffened and dropped the fork that she had been holding. Nobody really noticed at first, until AJ started crying and jump from his grandpa's lap to run to her. The room stopped and Andrew grabbed him before he could start to climb on Ava.

"What's wrong bug?" he asked as he held the squirming child.

"Ava's hurt." AJ muttered, confusing the group.

Andrew looked over at his oddly quiet girlfriend. "Are you hurt?"

Ava looked at him for a second before she answered. "Um, yeah, that hurt a lot actually. Carolyn told me that it would be gradual, but that was like….."

Andrew put AJ down and held Ava's hand. "What's wrong?"

Ava reached for the boy and placed him on the table in front of her. "I'm fine." She said to AJ as she smiled at him and dried his tears. She then turned to Andrew and answered him. "I had a contraction. It startled me and it did hurt. I thought that – " She broke off and then grimaced. "And my water just broke."

Everyone tried not to panic, but this was happening at a very accelerated pace and they weren't sure what to do. They had things set up at a local hospital with the idea that this would be a normal delivery, like Liz's had been. However, Ava going from zero to childbirth was not a good sign of that. Finally Jon called Carolyn and she decided to have the delivery at the base, just in case.

Twenty minutes later they were cramming into an elevator on the way down to the infirmary. When the doors opened they ran straight into Jack and Vala who were chatting happily on their way to another level. Ava was hit with a strong contraction and nearly fell to the floor, but was caught by Jack. Unfortunately when they made contact Jack was hit with a strong psychic backlash from Ava and tumbled to the ground with her on top of him.

"What the hell." he nearly yelled when the effect finally stopped.

"I, I, I don't know. That's never happened before." Ava was startled and grasping for answers as Jon and Andrew helped her back up and kept a hold of her arms for support.

"Let's just get you to the doc luv, we'll figure it out there. This ain't really the place you want to be having your baby." Spike said as he shooed her and her minders down the hall.

"We'll come too. Jack needs to be looked at when someone has a chance." Vala said. When she caught the dirty look the retired General shot at her she scowled at him. "And just for that I'm calling your wife away from her little friends in the lab." She turned and strode regally behind the main group, well as regally as she could anyway.

(&)

It was three hours exactly, from the time that Ava had her first contraction to the time of Ryan Wells' birth. It was a hectic and scary thing. Ava could not be touched by anyone, except eventually Willow, during her labor. Everyone who tried was knocked flat the way Jack had been.

It started out only happening during the contractions, but eventually it was constant. In pain and bereft of any physical comfort, Ava's fear overtook her and her more psychically inclined power went haywire. At one point she mind warped the whole room into something from Antar, with her mother there to hold her hand. That was when Willow decided that something needed to be done and placed herself with Ava so that she was sitting on the bed and Ava was leaning back into a hug, with the red head holding both of her hands for comfort.

Willow was able to hold back the psychic assault with her mental shields, but just barely, and was exhausted by it. This helped tremendously, but Ava still had to give birth without the aid of drugs or any hands on medical help. As it came down to the wire Dawn was able to help reinforce Andrew's own magical shields so that he was able to deliver his son, with direction from Carolyn.


And so it was that Ryan Jonathan Wells was born at 9:27pm to relieved and terrified parents, an unconscious witch, a room full of freaked out medical staff and a pissed off Jack O'Neal one cubical over.

AN: That's all for now folks. There is a side story for this that deals with Buffy and Xander's relationship. It's posted as "Follow Through" in the regular Buffy section, since there is barely any crossover to it, and that's just Kyle's presence a ways in. There will be more posted here when I get to the next story in this series. Thanks for reading and, hopefully, reviewing.