i. I don't think we're in Kansas anymore

She woke up abruptly, not knowing where she was or how she'd gotten there. Looking up, she could just barely see a dim purple glow in the air around her that faded as she watched. Feeling slightly numb, she turned her head. There was just enough moonlight shining in through a curtained window for her to be able to see her surroundings. She didn't have to dig very deeply into her memories to recognize the room. She seemed to be lying on something soft, probably a bed, in her old room in her mother's old house back in Sunnydale.

As slowly and carefully as she could, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Cautiously running her eyes over her body, Buffy discovered that she was fully clothed in one of her newly favorite slaying outfits. The familiar combination of a green khaki blouse, black leather pants, a light leather jacket, and the soft leather boots on her feet gave her a fleeting sense of security.

Sitting there, the numbness faded and her senses started to scream with a familiar rawness, a faint reminder of her first few days after Willow had resurrected her, mixed in with the sense that everything was about to go out of control that she remembered from when she'd first become a slayer. Breathing slowly while she worked to clamp down on her rampaging senses, Buffy tried to get a feel for her surroundings beyond the shadowed shapes.

There was something slightly off about the room. She had the vague feeling that something was missing from it. It looked like her room but wasn't. Some element that would have made this her room wasn't there. It felt different at some subconscious level she couldn't explain. The room seemed to possess a subtle mental tone or after-taste that indicated to her subconscious mind that even though it looked like her old room, it wasn't. That same something was telling her that she didn't belong here, in this place.

And then, as she sat there, the obvious differences jumped out at her. The room smelled different. No matter how much she'd tried over the years, with different perfumes, oils, and deodorizers, she'd never been quite able to get rid of the faint metallic smell of the knives, swords, and hand axes she'd kept in her weapons chest. But it was noticeably absent from this room.

The bed was also different. It was covered in the kind of soft, fluffy, comforter that her mother had always had. It hinted at a gentle person, not someone hard like she'd become. It wouldn't have lasted long as the bed of a slayer, a warrior, a dealer of death and defeater of prophecy. It hinted at things she thought she'd lost long ago. Parts of her soul she'd hidden away and forgotten.

And if it had been daylight she was confident that she'd see more of the differences she was sure were hiding in the shadows. She was sure there were drawers full of clothes that were meant to make their wearer feel pretty, or even sexy. Not clothes designed to protect against claws, teeth, and other sharp objects.

While sitting there, another very important fact quickly gave her consciousness a sharp jab. This couldn't possibly be her room. It had ceased to exist over five years ago, falling into a large hole in the ground along with the house and the rest of Sunnydale when they'd fought their last battle against the First Evil. As much as she would always miss parts of it, there was no going back to Sunnydale or 1630 Revello Drive. It was now at the bottom of a large lake.

It was then, her mind no longer buried in her memories, that she realized that she wasn't alone. Someone else was sharing this bed with her. And from the unfamiliar sounds and smells, it was an unknown female someone. Turning her head away from her examination of the room, she stole a glance at the small lump on the other side of the large bed.

She'd shared her bed with very few people over the years, both men and women, for a multitude of reasons. Most of them were long gone, some their choice, some hers. While she didn't remember falling asleep the previous evening, the lonelier she became the more she seemed to crave being alone. Even if she weren't in some strange, perverse version of her old room, she was certain that she wouldn't have spent the previous night with a stranger given a choice.

Luckily, she was able to slide off of the bed and onto her feet without waking her unknowing bed mate. Looking closer at the slight, blanket shrouded figure, all she could see in the faint moonlight were a few stray blond hairs poking out from underneath the pillow covered head.

She silently debated the wisdom of staying there until her unwitting roommate woke up and asked for an explanation of her presence, or exploring the house and trying to figure out what was happening on her own. True to her slayer roots, Buffy chose the active option and quietly snuck out of the room, pausing briefly in the door to ensure that she hadn't woken the room's slumbering occupant and to check her clothes for anything she could use as a weapon. She was dismayed to find that the only sharp thing she had in her possession was the slim, razor sharp boot knife that had been a gift from her sister on a previous birthday.

In the years since she'd last seen her mother's house, she'd forgotten what it looked like without dozens of energetic young women occupying every possible nook and cranny. Looking around, it took her a few moments to orient herself and to determine that it was the same with only a few minor cosmetic differences.

The carpet was softer under the thin soles her leather boot and the wallpaper was less dingy. The stairs hadn't seen as much wear as she dimly remembered. If she looked harder, she was sure she could find all of the spots missing where she remembered Xander had repaired some fixture broken in a fight with some demon that managed to get in the house. Yes, on the surface it looked like her mother's house, but it really wasn't.

Wandering down the upstairs hallway, Buffy stopped, curiosity getting the better of her, and looked in what would have been Dawn's room. From the boy band posters plainly visible on the walls and the row of porcelain dolls on a high shelf, it was obviously the room of a teenage girl. In the faint light there were no pictures or other clues that she could see that revealed the identity of the room's occupant.

But standing just inside in the doorway, Buffy could feel herself relax slightly. There was something special about this room. Something within it that she found more welcoming than the room she'd woken up in minutes earlier. If she could, she would stay in it all night, absorbing whatever she was sensing.

The room seemed to speak to her. This is what a slayers' bedroom feels like she found herself thinking. She'd lived with enough other slayers over the years to recognize the signs, to feel the almost tangible presence of a slayer. But she knew it really wasn't a good idea to stick around in the room or the house, no matter how familiar and comforting the slayer's room felt to her still raw senses. Poking around in the dark in a slayer's house was a guaranteed recipe for getting hurt, even for another slayer.

Standing at the top of the stairs, she took a deep, calming breath to center herself. Stretching out with her enhanced senses, she couldn't detect any other signs of life within the house. Just the sleeping woman in the room she'd started out in. But at least two women lived in the house, not just the currently sleeping occupant. And the missing slayer was definitely something to be concerned about.

Like most predators, slayers had a tendency to be very territorial. If the one living in the house was out patrolling her hunting grounds Buffy really didn't want to be found wandering about. Things could get very messy when the potentially wired slayer returned home. Especially if the other person in the house was a member of the slayer's immediate family. She vividly remembered how she'd reacted to Faith when she'd first shown up in Sunnydale and had no desire to provoke this slayer, unintentionally or not.

The only real question was whether she waited for the slayer to come home or if she found somewhere else to go to that would be seen as less threatening and least likely to cause a violent reaction. While going downstairs, away from the house's sleeping occupant, was a good start, staying in the house wouldn't be a good idea. It could be seen as confrontational. Not the message she wanted to get across.

But she wasn't prepared to run away. She'd learned over the years that she functioned much better when she took the direct approach. While it was risky to just wait and see what would happen, Buffy's instincts were telling her to do just that. Once she'd dealt with the local slayer, made her presence known, she could start worrying about where she really was and how to get home.

And there was the added bonus that hunting for the slayer on her home turf without an understanding of the local demon population could possibly get her into trouble she couldn't easily get out of, even if, as she suspected, it turned out to look a lot like her Sunnydale. It had been a while since she'd intentionally done something that foolish. Especially without any backup. And the results from that fiasco still haunted her, even if Xander had forgiven her years ago.

Given the situation, the best place to wait, she decided as she looked curiously around the dark kitchen, seemed to be the back porch. Sitting on a porch was a friendly thing that enemies rarely did. Well, anyone except for Spike and he'd always been an exception, even before becoming an important part of her life. They'd had their problems but even now she still missed him, more than five years after she'd lost him for good.

Turning thought into action, Buffy went through the kitchen door and out onto the porch in search of the most visible part of it, a place where she didn't feel so vulnerable. She found a porch swing near the door, and perched on it while she waited. Sitting there, quietly meditating, a habit she'd picked up following the destruction of Sunnydale, Buffy ran over the things she'd done and thought since waking up.

It was only then that everything really hit her. Giles and Willow would be so proud of her restraint, she thought. She was thinking and planning before acting. She just hoped that some day she would have a chance to tell them.

It's been a quiet, uneventful patrol, like so many others since she'd become a slayer. Reaching the row of trees obscuring the fence at the edge of her back yard, Dawn could feel the presence of something with supernatural power ahead of her. It wasn't the same sensation that she would get from the rare occasional vampire or even rarer demon that the closed local hellmouth attracted. That feeling could best be described as rusty flavored, like an shuddery aftertaste caused by a sharp metal object being dragged across a chalkboard.

This feeling was different. Almost as if someone were massaging the back of her neck while tugging on the hair there, causing a faint tingling. Not the most welcome feeling, but not exactly painful. The feeling wasn't panic inducing but she'd detected something large just at the edge of her sense that had been following her since leaving Restfield. A something that was giving off a faint vampire-like vibe. Together the different feelings were beginning to make herself feel nervous as she approached home.

Stepping through a gap in the fence, Dawn squinted in the moonlight while she tried to get a better sense of the direction of the stronger presence. Looking towards her house, she saw a small figure sitting on the back porch, staring back at her, as if waiting for her to return. She hoped it wasn't her sister, though the chances of it being someone else in that exact spot so close to dawn were very slim.

She'd somehow managed to keep her late night excursions a secret for months, but she knew that even her oblivious sister would eventually discover how often she wasn't in her bed, often for large parts of the night. She would rather fight a master vampire in her own back yard than have her sister find out about her secret life before she was ready.

She didn't think she'd done anything to tempt Fate enough were she'd end up fight evil minions of the night in front of her sister. That certainly wouldn't be a highlight of her brief career as a slayer. Even the member of the local coven who served as her Guide wouldn't be too pleased if that happened.

Reaching the middle of the yard, it was clear that the unknown person was a woman. There was enough similarity to her sister that Dawn was startled into blurting out her name - "Beth. . . ?"

The woman cocked her head at her in a manner eerily reminiscent of her older sister. Cautiously stopping several yards from the porch, Dawn examined the woman. Her relief was so great at it not being her sister that the next thing she knew she was once more blurting something out.

"You're not my sister!" she said.

While she could have been mistaken for her sister from a distance, up close this woman appeared several years older. There was also some undefinable hardness to her features. Something in her past had left an indelible mark, stretching her being in ways that Dawn's bubbly, ex-cheerleader sister couldn't match.

Fluidly getting to her feet, the woman flashed her a faintly predatory grin, before replying. "No, I expect I'm not," she told Dawn.

Keeping herself busy carving several pieces of wood she'd found near the porch into stakes while she waited for the slayer to return home gave Buffy plenty of time to think. She'd come to a tentative conclusion about her situation mostly based on the things she'd seen so far. The house closely resembled, but wasn't quite the same one as, the she'd lived in. The yard had an orderliness that had been missing from her own home since her mother's death. That the house existed at all was a major clue.

She could only assume that she had somehow fallen into some sort of parallel universe or dimension and she needed to make a few decisions. Wherever she was, what she could sense of the town didn't seem to have that oppressive, dark, and musty feeling to it that she had always gotten near an active hellmouth and the other distinctly evil places she'd visited since becoming a slayer.

There was a slightly familiar background hum, but it wasn't clear to her if it was coming from a hellmouth or some other mystical artifact that she was able to sense in her current hyper state. Something she was going to have to investigate as soon as possible. But first came her most immediate need, survival.

A few years ago, following the Vampire Willow incident, she'd spent a little time discussing the idea of parallel universes and dimensions with Giles and her friends. She could no longer remember most of their discussion or even the differences between the two but what had stayed with her was Giles' advice on what any of them should do if they ever ended up in a similar situation.

He'd tried to convince them that a stealthy approach and observation was the better way to survive until they could find a way to get home. He'd also advised extreme caution when dealing with the doubles of people they might know in their own dimension. Forgetting that they weren't the same people, no matter how similar looking, could be fatal. The most important part of surviving in such a situation was staying alive.

Back then she would have thought she knew better and would have completely ignored his advice, but she would like to think she'd grown a lot since then. If his ideas helped her stay alive, anything was possible. But first she needed to do was to gain some breathing room. Once she'd come to some kind of mutual non-interference agreement with the local slayer she could worry about finding a place to stay and some sort of job.

With a mental grimace, she hoped she could find something better than her last entry level job at a Double Meat Palace. And that she didn't have to fight her way back to her home universe. Once was enough.

What little money she had, assuming it was even usable here, would have to last until she was able to get a firm grasp on the way this world worked. She had no desire to end up on the wrong side in some fight because she'd stumbled into something before she even knew what the sides were and what they were fighting for.

As soon as she was settled in she could focus on finding out how she got here and how to get back to where she came from. Hopefully this slayer had access to resources that she could use to help figure it out.

Buffy had just put down a finished stake when she became aware of a tingling sensation. It was almost like someone had brushed invisible fingers through her hair and down her back. It was fainter than what she'd always felt around Faith, and didn't echo in the back of her mind like the neo-slayers, but it had that distinct vibe that came only from an activated slayer.

Unless there was more than one slayer in the neighborhood, Buffy assumed it was the slayer she suspected lived here returning home. Looking towards the trees at the back of the yard, she could see someone cautiously approaching. From that distance, she appeared to be the same size as Dawn that year before Sunnydale became an advertisement for a poorly done urban renewal project. But her sister had just passed that awkward stage of adolescence back then. This girl moved with the almost hypnotic and ferocious grace of a small wildcat.

"Beth. . . ?" she asked, pausing hesitantly in the middle of the yard and giving Buffy a confused look before continuing forward.

She came to a complete stop several yards away and stared, giving Buffy plenty of time to look at her. She could have been Dawn's twin, if that twin had spent the last year training to be a slayer. And if Dawn had started wearing leather hand-me-downs from the local demon bikers club or getting fashion tips from Faith. Their likeness was so close that Buffy had to take a firm grip on her emotions to keep her conflicting feelings from showing.

The girl's next words confirmed Buffy's guess that she was in an alternate universe of some sort.

"You're not my sister!" the girl said, her eyes widened comically.

Buffy's first reaction, quickly quashed before it had become fully formed, was to explain why she happened to be sitting on that porch. In the few minutes since she'd come up with a basic plan, nothing about her situation had changed. Volunteering too much information about herself was already on the no list.

Buffy decided to answer with as much confidence as she could muster under the circumstances. How she acted now was very important and would set the tone for any interaction she might have with this slayer and her possible allies in the future.

"No, I expect I'm not." She told the girl, with a fierce smile that she hoped was only a little intimidating. Gracefully getting to her feet, Buffy stepped off of the porch.

ii. Getting down to business

Projecting what some of the younger Council members had taken to calling her 'queen like' persona, Buffy stepped off of the porch. She'd thought of a dozen different ways to approach the slayer but they'd all been discarded as soon as Buffy had seen her, leaving her with the one approach that always seemed to work when all else failed. She walked towards the girl with the confident swagger that surviving almost a decade as a slayer had given her, pushing her emotional reaction to the girl's unexpected resemblance to her sister into the farthest reaches of her mind, to be examined later.

Nearing her, Buffy noticed how the girl had nervously assumed a defensive posture as she watched Buffy approach. Working with dozens of the new slayers 'activated' by Willow just before the destruction of Sunnydale had given Buffy experience in using her mere presence to gain some mental control over a new slayer fairly quickly. Although she wasn't against exerting physical control over them when necessary, the violence involved when attempting to physically restrain a slayer tended to disturb onlookers so this ability had been extremely useful.

Willow'd been fascinated by the phenomenon the first time she'd seen Buffy stop a rampaging slayer with only a look and had spent some time investigating it. According to her, it was almost a form of hypnotism, though it didn't last very long. Even though Willow had claimed it was a skill any slayer should be able to learn, Buffy was the only one so far who seemed to be able to do it with any success.

She's stopped listening to Willow's theories when she'd heard through the grapevine how relieved certain Council members were when they'd discovered that her ability didn't work on Faith, or the more experienced slayers who'd faced the First Evil and its minions. But it did seem to work on this girl to some extent, keeping her from attacking or running away, giving Buffy time to look her over, circling her slowly just out of reach of her long legs.

Although she knew she wasn't being entirely fair, judging her without having any idea about the local situation, Buffy wasn't happy with what she was seeing and sensing. While the girl's presence proclaimed her slayer status to those who knew what to look for, she was missing that psychic hardness that permeated a slayer's essence after facing death on an almost daily basis until the end of her short life. It wasn't that she appeared physically soft, quite the opposite in fact, but she wasn't intimidating and didn't have that aura of implacable command taught to slayers through hard experience.

She was clearly dressed for battle but to Buffy's experienced eyes it displayed both inexperience and incompetence on the part of whomever had trained her.

While the heavy leather jacket and pants she was wearing would be enough protection against a fledgling vampire or small demon in a quick encounter; in a long, drawn out fight the weight of the inflexible leather clothes would slow her down and quickly wear her out. While there were situations where strength mattered, survival more often depended on speed and endurance, a concept she'd tried to pound into new slayers until it was second nature.

Amazingly, she didn't appear to have any weapons other than her stake, not even something as basic as a knife. And this, Buffy noticed, was in an awkward to reach location under her jacket. Retrieving it on the run without slowing down would be difficult, which could be fatal. Her heavy boots might protect her feet but would do more damage to her ability to run than they would help in a fight. The others might make jokes about Buffy's faux shoe addiction but the older slayers understood her reasons.

Buffy was surprised that she was still alive, if she went out on patrol every night dressed and armed like that. She wasn't ready to fight more than a single, weak vampire at a time. Even a small pack of vampires, or an older, experienced one would quickly kill her, with little effort. She was either very new or this was a town with a very small vampire population. And, assuming she even had one, if her watcher wasn't dead, they just as green as she was.

Buffy shook her head in dismay. While looks could certainly be deceiving, this wasn't a good starting point. Getting home would be a lot harder if the local slayer and her support system were as inexperienced as it currently looked. She could only hope she was wrong. She wasn't sure she had the energy to fight the potentially long odds to get home if she had to first fix an untrained slayer.

A low growl from the girl interrupted Buffy's thoughts as she continued her examination. Surprised that it had taken that long to get a reaction, Buffy lifted an eyebrow and stopped her circling before letting loose with what Willow had come to call her 'inner Cordelia' with little hesitation. It was something she'd found herself doing a lot more in the last few years since Sunnydale.

"Rude much? And who dressed you like that? Your mother?" Buffy said disdainfully. "Even your watcher should know better than to let you wear such clothes for patrolling."

She knew it wasn't the friendliest thing she could have said, but any response she got would hopefully quickly answer some of the many questions she had. And with the girl looking so much like her sister, Buffy was having a hard time keeping her emotions bottled up so quick was better, and made it easier to not let her concern at her obvious unpreparedness show.

"What's wrong with my clothes," the girl asked, glowering in obvious annoyance at the examination. "And what's a watcher?" she asked in an offended voice.

Well, that was an unexpected twist, Buffy thought. Dawn's double was clearly a slayer and she could have sworn she detected something like a hellmouth nearby and this universe was close enough to her own. Was it possible the Council of Watchers didn't exist here? Or did she just not know about them?

"The tweed brigade? Boring old men who watch you kill vampires while giving semi-useful advice? Sometimes calling themselves the Council of Watchers?" Buffy asked, dialing down her Cordelianess. "Someone must keep an eye on you," she added at her blank look.

"I'm not sure what a watcher is or does," the girl told her dismissively, "but I haven't needed a babysitter for years and..."

Before she could finish, Buffy, her senses still working overtime, felt the presence of a number of vampires. Imperiously holding up a hand, she stopped the girl mid-sentence with a hissed "Shhh...!"

Dawn braced herself as the woman walked toward her with a regal grace that belied her short stature. She didn't think the woman was evil, but on top of her automatic subservient reaction to her sister's look-alike, Dawn suppressed the unexpected urge to fall at her feet in worship. It was a disturbing feeling.

The woman circled her like she was some ratty old exhibit in an abandoned museum. She wasn't used to being treated like an object. Even the oldest members of the coven, who'd worked with other slayers in the past, treated her better than this.

Dawn continued to stand there, semi-frozen in a defensive stance. There was something about the woman, something that mesmerized her and held her there. She couldn't seem to move, her muscles refusing to obey. She wondered if she were imagining the waves of some kind of energy that seemed to radiate from this woman.

She growled under her breath in frustration at her immobility, diverting the woman from her examination. Her ensuing verbal attack left Dawn angry and confused. What was wrong with her clothes? She'd always dressed like this for her nightly patrols. Besides which, she was just doing wearing what the other slayers wore. And the comment about having a watcher made no sense. What was a watcher and what did they watch, she thought. And why did this woman think she should have one?

The woman's explanation only confused her further. It was so not helping. Why would she need a babysitter? She was quite capable of taking care of herself. Before she could do more than express her disdain at the idea she was stopped by the woman's quick signal to be quiet.

And then she felt it. The vampire she had thought might be following her earlier was now a lot closer, just out of sight on the other side of the fence, and she was stuck. There wasn't enough time to get herself and the woman to safety if she had to protect her. The only other option was to risk bringing a potential enemy into the house, which didn't seem like a smart idea. She would have to fight the vampire and hope the woman stayed out of it.

While Dawn was going over her options, the woman became unnaturally still. Dawn could almost feel it as her attention shifted towards the fence. She seemed to be searching for something in the air as she did so. Dawn gulped as a pack of five vampires came into view at the end of the yard, her senses going wild, the urge to fight, to defend her territory, warring with the urge to run away.

"Are these friends of yours?" the woman asked quietly in a flat voice.

"Friends? Vampires? Are you crazy?" Dawn blurted out.

"Just checking," the woman told her with a shrug. "So, you won't mind if I deal with them before we continue our discussion?" she calmly asked.

Before Dawn could formulate a coherent reply, the woman strode forward, standing between her and the oncoming vampires. She mentally amended her previous thought. This woman wasn't just crazy, she was foolish and suicidal. And it looked like she was being dragged along for the ride. Reaching into her jacket, she tugged out her stake.

With a mental sigh at the girl's inaction, Buffy strode up to the oncoming vampires, putting herself between them and the girl. She stopped in front of the obvious leader, halting them in their tracks before they'd made it more than halfway into the yard. They weren't a very frightening looking bunch of blood suckers, she thought. Harmony, poster child for inept wanna-be master vamps everywhere, had been scarier than some of them.

Chances were they were newbies, fresh out of the grave, and it wouldn't take much effort to get rid of them. The only question being - could she do it without a fight? And did she even want to? A good fight might actually set her senses back to normal.

"Get out of our way, little girl," snarled the assumed leader. "We have business with the slayer!"

Although she'd carved herself several stakes with her boot knife during her earlier wait, this wasn't her world. So while she was far from defenseless, and her first instinct was to kill them, Buffy wasn't sure fighting random vampires, unless it was in self defense, was a good idea before she'd had a chance to learn more about the local power structure. Especially if she were stuck in some nightmarish universe like that fictional Anita Blake one where vampires had rights.

She had no desire to start her stay in this universe with a visit to jail if the local authorities objected to her killing vampires. Assuming any of them escaped. It wasn't her usual approach but what if she could get rid of them without resorting to violence? She'd had a fifty percent success rate with talking other demons out of violent rampages at home. Sure, a large part of that had been because of her reputation, but maybe it would work here?

She was used to being the focus of any vampires in her vicinity but these weren't in any apparent hurry to attack, staring at her in confusion. She didn't seem to be on the menu, a very odd experience for her. For some reason they didn't seem to realize she was a slayer, their only natural enemy. They seemed a little single minded about their stated task, even for vampires, waiting for her to get out of the way.

The only thing she could think of that some master vampire had sent them on an errand which apparently involved the slayer. Which, in this universe, wasn't her. But they should have recognized her as a slayer or some other dangerous creature. She'd sensed the other slayer herself, so it wasn't that she was that different.

And then a possible explanation occurred to her as all of these thoughts were running through her mind. Out of sheer boredom, while she sat on the porch, carved stakes and waited for the slayer to appear, she'd been practicing Willow's new aura hiding trick. Was it possible they couldn't actually sense she was a slayer? She hadn't realized it would work so well on vampires. And how long would it last? Unfortunately, facing vampires was not the best time to figure that out. Experimenting would have to wait.

But surely they would have also attacked a normal person, she thought. Not that it mattered. Right now she had to get rid of them. How didn't matter. First the talking, and if that didn't work, the violence she was so adept at after so long. Sure, vampires usually responded better to physical persuasion than to verbal methods, but it was worth a shot. Maybe she could talk her way out of this?

"She's mine!" Buffy declared to the speaker, putting as much conviction as she could into her voice. "This is as close as you're getting. If you can't talk to her from there you can leave. Or die. Your choice." She shrugged as if it didn't matter to her.

They were arguing over her, Dawn thought in surprise, feeling faint. The crazy woman was facing five vampires who wanted her, the slayer, and she was threatening them. And she didn't seem to be the least bit afraid of them.

She'd never fought more than one vampire at a time in the months since she'd become a slayer. And it had very rarely taken her longer than a minute or two when they fought. With the help of the coven, she'd managed to catch most of them when they'd just risen and were still groggy and easy to destroy.

All of her training up to this point had ultimately stressed survival. 'Don't get caught in a fight unless you can't avoid it', 'Get to some place safe when outnumbered', she'd been told. This advice had served the slayers in her line well for many centuries. Most of them had lived a long time, keeping vampire numbers low enough that most ordinary people believed they were just a myth.

But this was different. Did she help out a potential enemy? Or did she run away from both her and the vampires? When it came down to it, Dawn didn't think she could abandon someone to certain death, or worse.

Listening to them, she could tell the discussion between the vampires and the woman wasn't going well. The vampires not actively trading insults with her were starting to growl. She could feel the hair at the back of her neck rising with the tension she felt as the sound increased. Watching closely, Dawn noticed a subtle shift in the woman's stance, and wondered what it meant.

Suddenly, one of the smaller vampires lunged forward, and almost faster than even she could see, Dawn watched the woman stake that one and another with quick, short jabs of the wooden stake that had suddenly appeared in her hand. From the stunned looks on the faces of the remaining vampires, she could tell they were as surprised by this as she was. They apparently weren't expecting any real resistance. Before they could react she'd thrown another stake at a third, dusting it where it stood.

Backing away from the two remaining vampires, the woman quietly called to Dawn, "I've saved one for you," before she abruptly charged back towards them. The woman grabbed the smaller one and shoved it in her direction.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the other vampire was putting up a real fight. Hers, on the other hand, blindly attacked her and all she had to do was step out of the way at the last minute and trip it as it went by. Staking it took less than 5 seconds while it lay on the ground, and before it could get back up.

Coughing on the cloud of vampire dust she'd been unable to avoid, Dawn stayed where she was, watching in awe as the small woman fought the remaining vampire with an energy and skill she knew she wasn't close to possessing. This was a tough vampire and she knew that she wouldn't have lasted a minute against it. Even less if she'd had to deal with the other vampires at the same time.

Take a deep breath, Dawn tried to use the aura sensing technique she'd recently learned, hoping to get some sense of who the woman was. The vampire she was fighting was a black pit of evil nothingness, like she expected. But it was almost as if the woman wasn't there. There was a big spot of empty nothingness where she should have been. Dawn couldn't sense anything evil but she shivered at the sensation. Maybe someone in the coven would know what that meant.

Watching the punches back and forth and the kicks and other moves she wasn't familiar with, she hoped she wouldn't have to fight the winner. Her training over the years had stressed defense and speed while this woman's style was a combination of aggression and brute strength, mixed with a number of half familiar moves she almost recognized.

This vampire was obviously a formidable opponent but he was clearly outmatched. Wherever vampires learned to fight, it wasn't good enough, Dawn thought. On top of that, the woman seemed to be playing with it. That she was able to do so with a fierce grin on her face was even more frightening to the young slayer.

The girl had quickly taken care of her opponent but Buffy had been too busy to catch much of their fight. From what she'd seen out of the corner of her eye, it had been more luck than skill. A closer examination of her abilities would have to wait. Right now she had a stubborn vampire to eliminate.

A few punches in the right place. A powerful kick in another. A few bones broken in strategic places to slow him down and she was able to stake him. A relatively weak vampire. Not much of a challenge compared to the ones she usually fought. Pausing to shake the vampire dust out of her hair, Buffy turned back around to face the girl.

She really needed to burn off her excess energy, that hadn't been enough of a workout. An inexplicable anger had been steadily growing as she thought about the situation she found herself in. The short semi-meditation session while carving the stakes hadn't done much to slow it down. She needed to deal with it before she exploded. But the slayer in front of her didn't deserve to be included in the explosion so it would have to wait.

Raising an eyebrow, she looked at the pale girl. She could almost see the fear radiating from her. She was looking at Buffy like she was from another planet. Buffy nodded at her and waited for the expected questions.

"How...? Who are you? Why...?" the girl stammered out.

Ignoring most of her questions, Buffy answered the easiest "It's what I do. And thanks to our dusty friends we both know what you are supposed to be... but, your name is?"

"Dawn, Dawn Summers," she answered, a little color returning to her face.

"Ah, I thought that might be it. You look like a Dawn," Buffy said, knowing that she would need to avoid using this girl's name as much as possible. Given the things that had happened to her own sister, Buffy didn't want to become too fond of one that looked so much like her, especially with the short life expectancy of most slayers.

"Well, I'm sure you need to get some sleep. I'll see you some time tomorrow. We can continue our interrupted discussion then," she said, looking her up and down again. "I think we should also discuss your training regimen at some point, while I'm in town. Looks like you could use a little help."

The girl gaped at her in shock. Turning towards the street, Buffy walked away, headed towards the center of town. Hopefully the little money she had with her was close enough to what they used here that she could at least get a cup of coffee somewhere. She didn't think anyone, even in Sunnydale, would take anything else she would willingly offer them at this hour. Sleep would have to wait until daylight or when she found a safe place to crash for a couple hours.

iii. Getting comfortable

It had been a moderately productive beginning to what she suspected was going to be a long day, thought the displaced slayer. Between breakfast at an all-night diner on the edge of the warehouse district, a walk along the beach at dawn, and nursing a cup of coffee at the downtown donut shop, she'd managed to remain inconspicuous until the local shops began to open for the day's business.

And thanks to Xander, she'd at least gotten a good start at blending into the scenery. He'd recently begun insisting they all carry small amounts of gold on trips out of the country, unobtrusively concealed somewhere in their clothing. At the time Buffy had only done it to humour him, having the Council taylor hide several ounces of gold thread, and a small packet of easily disposed of gems in the linings of her boots and favorite leather jacket. But now she wondered if the impulse had come from another source.

She'd been able to exchange a portion of her gems for local currency at a jeweler without much difficulty. It wasn't a lot but it had enabled her to get some very basic transportation, an old motorcycle that brought back memories of her life before Sunnydale. While riding it down to LA had done little to dispel her feelings of being disconnected from reality, it had given her plenty of time to think.

Once there she'd turned over a large portion of her gold thread to a documents specialist, as the woman preferred to be called, in exchange for the several forms of local identification she needed so she wouldn't attract unnecessary attention - a driver's license, passport, and social security number that would fool almost anyone, including the local authorities. She'd kept her own name for simplicity. She didn't think trying to remember a fake name would make things easier.

It was something else she would have to thank Willow for, if she ever made it home. If it weren't for the urban survival classes they'd been holding for the new slayers she'd insisted Buffy sit in on, she wouldn't have known who to approach and how to talk with them in order to get this taken care of so quickly.

On the return trip to Sunnydale, Buffy reviewed her plans for the next few days. Once she'd replenished her wardrobe and purchased the other necessities of modern life that her still unknown mode of multi-dimensional travel had left her without, she hoped there would be enough left over to pay for a month's rent on a small apartment somewhere in Sunnydale and the basics to make it livable. Nothing fancy but hopefully not too dingy.

A sleeping bag, some bean-bag chairs and large pillows would have to do for furniture until she could get a job. Other things, like a television and decorations, could wait. There was no point in spending money on anything she didn't really need.

Nodding to herself as she pulled off the interstate at the Sunnydale exit, Buffy decided that tomorrow she would look for an apartment that fit in her meager budget. A phone, post office box, and anything else she needed would follow, and then she could go job hunting. Her remaining gold wouldn't last the month if she didn't find something quickly. The few gems left over would be saved for an emergency. For now she needed a few hours sleep before she could go looking for the slayer and a hotel room would have to do.

Passing the diner she'd eaten at that morning, Buffy saw an old hotel, like something out of a black and white movie. While it wasn't in the best part of town, stepping into the shabby but clean lobby she could see that it was still better than the small ratty motel rooms she remembered Faith living in when she'd first come to Sunnydale. It would do for a night or two.

If she looked hard enough she was sure she could find a motel like one if Faith's, but although it might save her money she wasn't a teenage runaway slayer. She wasn't going to be in this town or even universe for more than a couple months, but she couldn't live like she was just passing through. For a few hours each day she needed to feel safe, to have a sense of security while she slept, a place to call home even briefly, something a motel room couldn't give her.

Closing her room door behind her and dropping her few possessions on the floor, Buffy took a minute to check the room before exhaustion caught up with her. Unable to resist the pull of the bed in the center of the room, she just barely managed to remove her clothes before lying down and quickly falling asleep.

She'd never been a fan of early mornings but since becoming a slayer, Dawn had been finding it even harder to get up for school. With her patrolling schedule keeping her out late more often than not, she was rarely able to get more than four uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. Most days she was lucky to get up before her sister left for work. Her Guide said she would get used to it and to not worry about it, but she had learned to take such advice with more than a grain of salt.

Adapting to the schedule wasn't happening yet, even after months of following it. She was beginning to have doubts that it would ever happen as her Guide claimed. After all, it wasn't her Guide who was out so late every night keeping the forces of evil at bay. Most weeks, by Wednesday she was on the edge of total exhaustion, barely making it through her classes the rest of the week without falling asleep.

The weekends were when she attempted to catch up on both her sleep and her schoolwork. And spending some time with her few friends was one of the few things that made her days bearable. But her constant exhaustion from the odd hours had strained her friendships almost to the breaking point. Every weekend she spent a lot of time trying to repair the damage she'd inflicted on her relationships with inattention during the week.

Her sister was oddly sympathetic. Dealing with teenagers on a daily basis as a high school guidance counselor, she'd noticed when Dawn had started having problems getting up in the morning and had taken the time to discuss it with her, instead of getting upset. Her sister had explained it away as just a normal part of growing up. As long as Dawn made it to school in time for her first class of the day her sister left her alone in the mornings. On the days she missed her mother more than normal, on birthdays and family holidays, she liked to imagine that she would have reacted the same way as her sister.

Even though Dawn, in true teenager fashion, found it embarrassing for her sister to be on a first name basis with all of her teachers, this was one of those times when she was very grateful for the support her sister gave her. But she still suffered the occasionally twinge of guilt from not being able to be completely truthful with her. She often wished she could explain the reasons behind her problems getting up in the morning, even though she was sure it wouldn't go over well with her normally sympathetic sister.

But this morning was one of the rare ones. She couldn't wait to get to school and talk with Ms. Rosenberg, her Guide and contact with the local coven. The computer teacher at her high school and one of her sister's oldest school friends, Dawn had known her longer than anyone in Sunnydale, except her sister.

They normally met for a few minutes every afternoon after school at the local coven house but she didn't think Ms. Rosenberg would object to an earlier meeting this time. Although the local coven house was their preferred location to discuss Dawn's previous evenings patrol of the local cemeteries and known demon hangouts, this was an emergency. After last night's events, she felt a need to see her Guide before the end of the day.

She could still spend her normal hour or two training at the coven tonight, before heading home for a late dinner with her sister. Fortunately, her sister thought she was taking a self defense class that her friend was teaching. She'd always encouraged Dawn's participation in such activities as long as her grades didn't suffer.

Dawn finally managed to catch up with Ms. Rosenberg just outside her classroom, right before 3rd period. "I need to talk with you!" she breathlessly exclaimed. "Something strange happened last night that I think you need to know about."

Motioning her into the deserted room, Ms. Rosenberg checked her schedule for the day. "I'm not free until lunch. Can it wait another hour?"

"I don't know. I guess it can. But the sooner we can talk the better," Dawn said before rushing off to class.

Third period seemed to take even longer than the normal forever. Dawn managed to escape from her friends at lunch, a not infrequent occurrence. She often wondered how long they would remain her friends. Maintaining friendships was hard to do when she couldn't really include them in the strange twists and turns her life had taken since she became a slayer. She could already sense them drifting away but, even with all of the effort she went to to spend time with them on weekends, she felt powerless to stop it. Losing them seemed inevitable.

Ms. Rosenberg's office was in the back of her classroom, in an enclosed space she'd insisted be soundproofed against the noise of twenty computers and assorted other bits of noisy, chattering equipment. Ms. Rosenberg motioned her in when she showed up, lunch bag in hand. It was the perfect place for a private conversation, their conversation masked by the noisy classroom.

"So what happened?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, clearly concerned. "Did your patrol last night go as planned?"

"The patrol went fine. Not a big deal. Only the one vampire you'd warned me about. I was able to get him before he could get all the way out of his grave. The strangeness didn't start until I got home," she said in a rush. Dawn paused briefly to take a breath and a bite of tuna sandwich.

"Okay, so... how did the strangeness start?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, encouragingly.

"There was a woman sitting on the back porch waiting for me. From a distance she looked kind of like my sister but when I got closer she looked much too old to be her," Dawn said. "But it still could have almost been her."

"What'd she look like?"

"Like a skinnier version of Beth, with an extra dose of that end-of-the-world look she had for months after Mom died," Dawn said after thought for a minute. "Oh, and she was dressed all in black and dark green and I think most of her clothes were leather. Very un-Beth-like," she added.

"Well... actually... Beth does leather quite well. Very butch," Ms. Rosenberg murmured under her breath with a slight grin, before taking a vague swipe at her usual lunch salad with her fork.

"Okay, that little facet of my sister's personal life I really did not need to know. Especially from one of her former girlfriends," Dawn said with a grimace.

"Sorry... pretend I didn't say that. Just recalling some fond memories," she said, the grin still visible on her face.

"Whatever..." Dawn grumbled, trying to act like the mature person Ms. Rosenberg preferred to deal with. "She's my sister, and I love her, but I just can't see the two of you together like that. Gives me the wiggins."

"Yes, you've told me. More than once. You don't need to worry. We found out years ago that we make better friends so there won't be a repeat." She shook her head at some unvoiced thought, before viciously stabbing at her salad. "Did this woman say what she wanted?"

"No... she insulted my clothes and asked about something or someone called a watcher. Does that sound familiar to you?" Dawn asked curiously.

"No, I'll have to look it up tonight in the Coven library," she said.

Dawn grimaced, recognizing that familiar gleam at the scent of something new to learn. Research was not her favorite thing, so whenever her Guide would get that look in her eyes, it was time to find an excuse to be elsewhere.

"Did anything else unusual happen?" Ms. Rosenberg asked.

"Oh, yeah, almost forgot," Dawn said, adding, "While I was talking with her, five vampires showed up at the house looking for 'the slayer'. She told them to go away, and when they wouldn't, she killed them! I've never seen anyone human move so fast! None of the past slayers you have taped could move that quickly. It was almost too fast to follow."

"Five? Are you sure?" Ms. Rosenberg asked, looking at her in surprise, a fork full of salad almost to her mouth.

"Well, actually, she let me have one of them," Dawn said, pausing for a minute to take a bite of her own lunch. "But I think she was just trying to figure how well I can fight. I don't think she was too impressed," she grumbled in annoyance.

"What about the way she fought?" Ms. Rosenberg asked. "You're usually fairly good at analyzing other people's fighting styles."

"Well, besides moving fast, she didn't seem to have a single recognizable fighting style. It was almost like she made it up as she went along," she said, thinking for a moment. "There were parts of some moves that seemed. I know I've seen them before somewhere, but I don't remember them being used together like that."

"Do you think she's a threat? To you, to the coven, or to future slayers," she asked. "Should we deal with her like any evil that comes to town or leave her alone?" Ms. Rosenberg wondered aloud.

"A threat to us? No, I don't think so. She didn't feel evil but she is dangerous. And fatal to vampires. Those ones last night would have killed me if she hadn't been there," Dawn said, shuddering. "There is no way I could have handled that many vampires at one time, but she cut through them like Justin Timberlake through a crowd of groupies. Awe inspiring but I didn't want to get too close."

"What else? That can't be everything," she said eagerly.

"There was definitely something different about her," Dawn told her. "I felt something strange when I was near her. A sort of tingling on the back of my neck. And I tried that aura trick you showed me a couple weeks ago, but it didn't really work on her. All I got was an impression of emptiness."

"Hmm... every living creature has an aura of some sort. It would take an awful lot of power and skill to hide it. It's possible it was just too faint for someone with your limited training to detect," Ms. Rosenberg said.

"Okay. Is there any chance you could find someone else to check her out? If I meet her again I want to know if I should fight or run away," Dawn told her, before adding in jest, thinking about her resemblance to Beth, "or welcome her to the family."

"I'll see what I can do. If you see her tonight while patrolling give her my phone number and let her know I want to see her," Ms. Rosenberg said. "And try to find out whatever you can when you do talk with her. The more we know the better chance we have if we do need to defend ourselves against her. Tonight at the coven you can show me what you remember seeing her do last night. Knowing how she was able to dust so many vampires so quickly could be useful if they are starting to flood the area."

Nodding, Dawn finished the rest of her sandwich in a few quick bites, and guzzled her almost forgotten soda. Gathering up her trash, she waved goodbye at her Guide who was finishing her own lunch, and left her office. If she hurried she could see her friends for a moment before her next class and make plans for the weekend.

The rest of her day went by quickly. As soon as the bell had rung to signal the end of another school day, Dawn was out the door and headed towards the Sunnydale Coven House, a large, rambling, Victorian mansion on the outskirts of town. It was set back from the road and surrounded by a large, overgrown looking yard and a wrought iron fence. As the local slayer, she had free range of the public parts of the building, which she'd thought was so cool when she first started.

Wandering into the large kitchen on the ground floor, Dawn grabbed a bottle of water before heading down the hall in search of her Guide. With her enhanced slayer senses, she could just barely hear voices rising and falling in several meetings going on in the meeting rooms set up on the first floor. She wasn't surprised to find Ms. Rosenberg in the extensive occult and demonology library next door to the private training room she used almost daily.

She suspected that her Guide spent more time there than in her own apartment. As the local slayer's Guide, Ms. Rosenberg lived in one of several studio apartments on the second floor. With a private entrance at the back of the house, it allowed her to have some privacy. There were two other apartments on the same floor, accessible from within, reserved for visitors and the occasional guest of the coven.

Dawn was glad the coven believed in participating in the community, serving as a focal point for an active wiccan community in the area surrounding Sunnydale. They practiced what they preached, and hadn't attempted to hide who they were from the conservative rural community when they'd arrived over twenty years ago, although the true purpose of the Coven's presence, supporting the local slayer, was known only to a select few, the original coven members who had come to Sunnydale in search of the future slayer, the Slayer's Guide, who was always chosen from the local community, and herself.

And, while her real role in the coven was a secret, she'd felt welcome from the start. Self defense classes that were offered on a regular basis in the training rooms, allowed her to spend time there without anyone taking too much notice.

Seminars, useful to both ordinary people and the magically inclined, were given on a regular basis. Dawn was given the freedom and encouragement of her Guide to attend any she found interesting. Meeting rooms were also made available to community groups on occasion. It was an oasis of calm that many made use of.

"Why don't we start with what you saw last night," Ms. Rosenberg said as a greeting, directing her towards their training room.

After reviewing what she remembered of the mystery woman's moves during the fight with the vampires the night before, and concluding that she was missing some key element that was preventing her from incorporating them into her own style, Dawn spent an hour going through her normal training routine.

"That's enough for tonight," her Guide told her, sitting against the wall. "You're doing great but you should get home before that sister of yours worries."

"Thanks," Dawn said, giving her a quick smile before heading to the small locker room and a hot shower. Her sister was fairly lenient, but she insisted that Dawn eat dinner at home most days no matter how busy she might be.

In a fairly typical end to her school day, after a quiet dinner catching up with her sister, Dawn spent the rest of the evening watching tv with her, before going up to her room to do her homework. Once that was complete, she went to bed, trying to sleep for a hour or two before patrolling.

And as soon as her sister had gone to bed and clearly fallen asleep, Dawn got up, threw on her favorite slaying outfit, grabbed a couple stakes, and snuck out into the night.

iv. Conversations with Slayers

Groaning in frustration, Buffy threw the pillow across the room. Even though she'd collapsed into an exhausted sleep as soon as she'd reached her motel room, she hadn't been able to remain sleeping for long. Her slayer's intuition had woken her several hours later, the sensation finally growing loud enough to reach through the exhaustion clouding her mind. It had risen to such a painful level that it prevented her from going back to sleep, her mind insisting that it meant something evil and unknown was lurking somewhere in the town, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting populace, all current evidence to the contrary.

As far as she'd been able tell, the sleepy town was devoid of any true evil. But after almost a decade of exposure to evil in all of its most intense forms, she had the feeling that adjusting to the lack of any evil permeating this Mayberry-lite version of Sunnydale was going to be more difficult than she'd first thought.

Pulling on her only clothes, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the faint coating of vampire and road dust, she kept telling herself that she should relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of what appeared to be a hellmouth free town, but the inner turmoil that was preventing her from getting more than several hours of much needed sleep didn't seem ready to listen. Staring at her tired eyes in the bathroom mirror, she hoped it was only a temporary condition.

Taking a deep breath in anticipation, Buffy stepped out of her motel room onto the balcony, staring out at the surrounding area. It was her first full evening in this town and she intended to get a good look at the local nightlife. From a map she'd purchased earlier that day at a small newspaper stand, it looked like there were less than half the cemeteries as her old Sunnydale and few of the names were ones she recognized. She was mildly surprised the town itself had a name she was familiar with if it was that different.

Hopefully, somewhere in the evening's itinerary she could track down the local hellmouth. The town felt free of the kind of evil that a hellmouth continuously expelled, so it must have been closed for a long time. But Buffy still wanted to find it, assuming it was even there. Just knowing its location would go a long way towards setting her mind at ease. She also wanted to do more than visit the local cemeteries. But the local demon bars, if any, would have to wait for another day. She still didn't know enough about the area to risk any confrontations before she was ready.

Looking around as she headed towards the center of town from her motel, Buffy was surprised at a trait that this peaceful looking Sunnydale shared with her former hometown. The streets she travelled seemed fairly deserted after dark and the people she did see moved in groups of three or more, giving her a wide berth when they saw she was by herself. This wasn't normal behavior for most small towns but she hadn't detected anything yet which would explain it. Buffy could only assume that something she didn't recognize was going on. Even the all-night diner near her motel had seemed close to deserted when she stopped in briefly to check it out.

Visiting all of the cemeteries, the only evidence of vampires Buffy could find was at least a day old. To her trained eyes it looked like the slayer had caught one before it was able to escape from its grave. Not how she'd been trained but very effective if the goal was to dust vampires while avoiding a confrontation. She hadn't seen enough of the slayer in action to know if this was her typical staking method, but she anticipated seeing that it was. It certainly explained a few of the things that were puzzling her.

They were very quiet cemeteries. From what she'd seen so far, Buffy suspected this was normal for this Sunnydale but she planned to confirm it at some point with the younger slayer. If she'd had to patrol quiet ones like this when she'd first come to Sunnydale she would have gone gradually crazy from the boredom. While she'd never really become as steeped in the adrenaline rush of slaying as Faith, she couldn't deny how, at least before she was brought back, slaying used to make her feel so alive.

Based on this little evidence, the five vampires from the previous night were probably not local. This had her wondering what had brought them to Sunnydale. If the hellmouth was closed so tightly that even she couldn't sense more than a faint echo of its presence, what was the attraction? And why was there a new slayer in a town with almost no vampires. There was a chance it was all unrelated but Buffy really needed more answers and not just the vague ideas and feelings cluttering her thoughts before she formed an opinion.

Finding the slayer couldn't be too difficult, she thought with a mental grimace. In her exploration of the local cemeteries, Buffy had seen only one fresh grave less than twenty four hours old. While she hadn't sensed the presence of a vampire in it the slayer was sure to come by to check it out just in case. If she'd ever had such a sleepy town to patrol that's what she would do. Anything to add a little excitement.

Returning to the cemetery where she'd seen the grave, Buffy settled down to wait for the slayer to arrive, perched cross legged on top of a large, nearby headstone. Breathing in the cool night air and meditating to expand her awareness of her surroundings as Willow had recently begun to teach her, Buffy unconsciously twirled a stake in her left hand and waited for the subtle presence of the young slayer to appear at the edge of her consciousness.

She'd been meditating for less than an hour, when she felt the slayer approaching the cemetery. Buffy opened her eyes and she seemed to appear out of thin air. If Buffy hadn't noticed her as she entered the cemetery she would have been taken by surprise.

"Well, hello! Looks like you have the physical part of being stealthy under control. Too bad there are demons, including vampires, who would have no trouble sensing you from a distance." Buffy began in her best imitation of Giles' favorite pedantic tone. "You really need to start working on the metaphysical side of being a slayer."

"What do you mean?" asked the shocked slayer. "How can a demon sense me from a distance?" she asked with a bit of concern.

Relieved that she wouldn't have to deal with an overtly hostile slayer, Buffy went with the simplest explanation. She wasn't sure she could give Willow's explanation for the whole slayer/vampire attraction without making a mess of it. She wasn't even sure she really understood it herself, even if she'd seen it in action for years. "Do you know what an aura is? And how to look at one? Hopefully without getting a headache?"

"Yes. I've been learning about them but I'm not very good at seeing them yet. If I try really hard..." Looking at Buffy with a look of intense concentration on her face she murmured "but today must be one of the 'not doing it too good' days. I can't seem to see yours. It's like you aren't here. It wasn't there yesterday when I tried it also." She admitted.

"It's there. And so am I. I've just learned how to make it less obvious if I don't want anyone to see it." She wasn't going to admit she'd just learned how to do it and didn't have much control over it once she'd 'turned it on'. "Comes in handy when avoiding demons and other creatures. You, on the other hand, I could sense when you walked into the cemetery." Buffy paused in thought for a moment. "There must not be many demons or vampires around here. You should be a demon magnet with that bright aura. And a vampire, unless it is very stupid or very arrogant, can tell a slayer is around and would stay far away. Unfortunately, too many of them are both."

"And the vampires last night? Where do they fit in?" she asked, leaning against a nearby tombstone.

"Just plain dumb minions. Somewhere there must be a master vampire who was pulling their strings." Tracking it down would give her something to do if she became bored, Buffy thought before continuing. "They didn't know why they were supposed to bring you to him, which would have been useful to know, but it certainly wasn't for fashion tips."

"Why do you keep insulting my clothes? Not exactly the height of fashion yourself. And what makes you a vampire expert!" a petulant slayer asked, stalking over to her. "There is only one vampire slayer in Sunnydale and that's me!"

"You aren't the only person who has ever fought vampires, young lady!" Buffy said sternly. For a horrifying moment she felt like she was channeling her mother. "I've managed to learn quite a bit about them in eight years of chasing the bloodsuckers. There are things you can only learn through experience... and any minute now I'll also start channeling Giles. Yuck!" She shuddered at the thought.

"Who or what is a Giles?"

"He was my teacher. Taught me everything I didn't learn from experience. Didn't do too badly, even if he did start out as a watcher. And you have no idea what a watcher is, do you?" she said rhetorically, remembering the blank look she had received when she'd brought up the subject the previous night. "You must have someone who teaches you and has trained you how to fight demons and vampires? Being a slayer isn't an automatic free pass from the Powers that Be for evil fighting skills. It just makes it a lot easier to learn them. Where I come from a watcher belongs to an organization that trains slayers."

"No... when I became the Slayer," Buffy could almost hear the quotes when she said that, "the local coven trained me and gave me a Guide to help me when I need it. And I get to use their private training room at their house, where my Guide lives. She's also the computer teacher at my high school and knows my sister."

Buffy thought she sounded like an eager puppy. "So your family trusts her? I'm assuming they don't know anything about vampires." Buffy wondered what was going on here. A coven involved in fighting? She hadn't heard of that before. The ones she knew were very anti-violence. Hopefully they treated their slayers much better than the Watchers Council had treated theirs. Another thing to look into when boredom struck, she decided.

She could feel herself getting restless. She hopped off the headstone. Her other questions could wait. She needed to burn off some energy. She wasn't sure what she was going to do but sitting here talking wasn't going to do it. "I have to run. I'll talk with you more tomorrow."

Before she could get completely away, the slayer blurted out "My Guide wants to meet you after school tomorrow."

"I'm busy tomorrow but if I have a chance I'll look her up." Hmmm, Buffy wondered, Wiccan computer teacher. Someone she knew from her Sunnydale? It had been a while since she'd thought about Jenny Calendar. "She wouldn't happen to be a short brunette? Sort of Gypsy looking?"

"Who? Ms. Rosenberg? She's had long red hair as long as I've known her. And she's a little taller than you!" Dawn made a face. "All of the boys in her classes have crushes on her, and some of the girls too. Not sure why. And her taste in girlfriends? Ewww... she even dated my sister in college. They've always been good friends but that was a mess. Beth can be such an airhead some times..."

"Okay." Cutting her off before she could say more, Buffy frowned. This was more than she wanted to know, especially if she was talking about her potential double here. She really didn't plan on being around long enough to get involved in the personal lives of these people. "Just let her know that I'll catch up with her some time tomorrow."

After a quick glance around, Buffy slipped out of sight into the woods. The young slayer attempted to follow her with her eyes for a minute before shrugging her shoulders and leaving, with Buffy shadowing her well out of sight, through several other cemeteries, the small airport, and the Sunnydale docks, before finally heading home.

In the process of shadowing her Buffy also dusted several vampires who seemed to be spying on the oblivious slayer. Something else someone should talk with her about. A predictable patrol route was not a good thing even in a town like this sleepy version of Sunnydale.

Having burned off enough energy trailing the younger slayer to at least calm her restlessness, and without finding any obvious evidence of a hellmouth, Buffy headed back to her motel room, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep. Lying there, staring up at the ceiling, Buffy wasn't sure if she could handle seeing another familiar person from her past without losing it. It wasn't this Sunnydale that was the real problem. It at least was different enough that it was almost like being somewhere else. She suspected this town had never experienced an immortal mayor intent on ascending to full demon-hood.

And this Dawn, the slayer, was also very different from her sister. The innocence, the sense of always experiencing the world fresh every day that her sister exhibited, even during the worst of their battles with evil, wasn't there. This girl was a slayer and that changed someone. She wasn't sure if she would be able to address her by name but she wouldn't be confusing one for the other any time soon.

And then there was this girl's sister, this Beth. She hadn't met her and had no desire to see what another universes' version of her would be like. From the things the slayer had already said this sounded like it could be a non-slayer version of herself, though her double being gay was a truly unexpected difference. Seeing how she might have been if she hadn't become the slayer was an experience she hoped to avoid.

On the other hand, this Ms. Rosenberg sounded a bit like her Willow, with the red hair, computer teaching, preference in companions, and being a Wiccan. Meeting her without falling apart was going to be tough. No matter how much they'd grown apart in the past few years, she still missed her former best friend. If Willow had been with her she just knew they would have been well on their way home already. As far as she could remember it had only been two days since she'd last seen her but it somehow felt like it had been a lot longer.

She only briefly wondered if she would run into versions of Xander or Giles. Her relationships with the few men she allowed into her life now had been strained recently for reasons she wasn't ready to think about yet. Not thinking about them unless they were in front of her had become the only way she could cope with their distance. She couldn't imagine running into anyone else from her Sunnydale days. The thing that would have been the catalyst in bringing them here, the Hellmouth, didn't seem to exist in the same evil spewing way.

After a quick breakfast at the diner near her motel, Buffy resumed her clandestine observations of the slayer, following her to school, easily staying just out of range of her enhanced slayer senses.

Apartment hunting later that morning went better than she'd hoped it would. Just down the street from the local coffee house on Main Street she'd found a loft above a used books store. The smell of old books permeating the walls gave it an almost home-like feel to the lonely slayer. Next on her list was finding a job. She'd been lucky enough to be able to pay two months rent for the loft in advance but if she wanted to eat real food, and pay for a phone of some sort, she needed a steady income. But that would have to wait until after she'd met with this Ms. Rosenberg.

After moving her few possessions to her new apartment Buffy headed for the school that Dawn attended. The school receptionist had given her an odd look when she'd given her name and had asked for directions to Ms. Rosenberg's office. Buffy hoped she wasn't being mistaken for someone else. Her plans to settle in quietly in Sunnydale didn't need that kind of complication.

Ms. Rosenberg wasn't in her office or classroom when Buffy found it in the unfamiliar school. After a quick look around to satisfy her curiosity, she made herself comfortable, perching on a clear corner of the desk, meditating while she waited.

She hadn't been there very long when she felt a slight tug in her head. This was new. It wasn't the feeling she got around other slayers or evil creatures like vampires. There was a warmness to it, like the beginnings of a hug. But like so many other things she was discovering about this world, investigating its source would have to wait.

Looking towards the door she saw a young woman, looking the way she remembered Willow looking before the fight with Glory. Before everything had spiraled out of her control and she'd permanently lost her aura of innocence. She stood fidgeting in the door as if she were afraid to enter.

As she began to speak Buffy listened more to the tone of her voice than to the words, the offer of help. There was a softness in her voice. Just like the young slayer had been softer, untried in real battle, this woman was not visibly hard and tough like her Willow had become. Another tidbit to add to her growing picture of a place that hadn't experienced much conflict. It didn't help explain why she'd ended up here but she was beginning to wonder.

Willow had stopped in the office to pick up some paperwork on her way back from lunch with a friend when she was told she had a visitor, a Miss Summers, waiting for her in her office. She wondered about the comment from the receptionist that she hadn't known that Dawn had another older sister as she hurried down the hall.

Pausing in the doorway of her classroom to catch her breath, she saw several things she hadn't expected. There was a woman sitting on her desk, almost as if she belonged there, apparently meditating. From her resemblance to Dawn's sister, and her clothing she seemed to fit the description of the woman Dawn had run into at her house and while patrolling the following night. There was definitely something odd about her aura. Dawn hadn't been wrong about that. It seemed to fade into her surroundings, allowing her to almost disappear psychically. She hadn't even realized that it was possible to do that.

And then there were her clothes. She could have been wearing a uniform, an almost fashionable one to be sure but clearly clothes with a purpose other than to look good. And she seemed to subtly dominate the room she was in. It was very clear to her who was in charge here.

"Miss Summers?" she asked hesitantly. There were still the rare times when she unintentionally fell back to her shy, pre-college self and this was one of them. "Is there something I can help you with?"

No longer meditating, the woman shifted slightly, looking at her with a faint, almost friendly smile. "I believe you wanted to see me, Ms. Rosenberg?"

"Yes..." She really hadn't thought about what she would do if the woman actually showed up in response to her request. She mentally shook her head. "Yes I did."

"I'm assuming you wanted to discuss Dawn?"

"Discuss what about her? Shouldn't you be talking with her sister instead?" she said defensively.

"Not unless her sister is in charge of her late night extracurricular activities." the woman told her. "I believe she has said you help her with those."

"Yes... but what does that have to do with you?" Willow asked warily.

"If you expect her to make it to her next birthday, her training seems a bit lacking. From what I've seen so far... if she had to fight an experienced vampire or a powerful demon she wouldn't survive the encounter. And I'm not the only one who knows that."

"What do you mean?" It wasn't clear to Willow whether this was an offer of help or if some kind of threat was being made. "And why would I listen to you?"

"You don't have to listen to me. I won't try to make you." She shrugged indifferently. "But you might want to think about why there were vampires watching your slayer last night, without her noticing them, and what they wanted with her." The woman hopped off of her desk and placed her hand on Willow's left arm, lightly squeezing it. "And this isn't really the place to discuss such things. If you want to discuss it further you can meet me at the 'Coffee Garten' on Main Street at 6pm."

Holding her arm where the woman had touched it, Willow watched in amazement as the petite woman strode out of the room without looking back.

v. Coffee and Two Wiccans to Go

Buffy spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the shops in Sunnydale, attempting to correct her lack of a wardrobe with her meager remaining funds. The feeling that she had no place was much like she'd felt the months after the Sunnydale hellmouth had collapsed. That time she'd also needed to start over and replace closets full of lost clothes but at least that time she'd had a much larger budget, thanks to Giles, and other people like her sister and Willow to shop with. Other people who had some vague idea of what she was going through.

As she carefully selected things she really needed and stared wistfully at things she couldn't justify, Buffy was finding that shopping alone could be boring, with no-one to share the experience or results with. The fun part of shopping, the social part, seemed to have deserted her, now that she was alone. It didn't help that she couldn't really buy everything she might need right away. She needed to be careful to save some of her money. If she found a job that required her to wear a specific style of clothes she needed to be able to purchase them.

But she did make an effort to at least find several things to wear that would lighten her image. Dark colors were fine if she was wandering around cemeteries, but she knew they wouldn't help her get a job. She'd noticed the wary looks thrown her way in a lot of the shops. She really needed to appear less threatening.

While she shopped Buffy kept thinking about her meeting with the Rosenberg woman with some bemusement. She couldn't get it out of her head, certain that she'd somehow bungled the meeting. It wasn't just that she'd neglected to find out if her name really was Willow, something she could have easily found out or even that she resembled a younger, more innocent version of her Willow.

No, what had really confused her was how just touching the redhead had been calming. The simple, brief physical contact had lessened some of the anxiety that had been slowly building in her mind over the past two days. She couldn't explain it but somehow she felt less lost, less disconnected than she had before their brief encounter.

And what mystified Buffy most about it was why she'd done it in the first place. The physical gesture had felt oddly appropriate at the time, even though she rarely touched anyone if she had a choice. Since coming back from the dead the second time she'd distanced herself as much as possible from any gentle physical contact. But for some reason she'd felt the need to physically connect with this person she'd just met. At least she hadn't given into the embarrassing impulse she'd had to hug her.

And while she hadn't explicitly offered to help the slayer, she might as well have. She knew the girl needed some kind of assistance. She obviously wasn't getting enough of the right kind of training from this coven. But Buffy's plan had not originally been to become involved herself. She felt it was too dangerous, in ways she couldn't quite articulate, to invest any of her own emotions in her. She was going to have to watch out for that impulse to jump in and interfere in the future. Hopefully it was only a brief moment of weakness on her part.

Noticing the time on a nearby clock, after finishing another round of trying to second guess her earlier behavior, Buffy brought her shopping trip to an abrupt halt. She had just enough time to take her things back to the loft and change into something more appropriate before her meeting. Fortunately she'd managed to find an appropriate outfit. She had no plans to try to blend into the background but sticking out was also not in her plans.

Willow hadn't allowed Dawn to come with her, leaving her in a funk back at the coven's house. She didn't think the potentially explosive combination of her often temperamental slayer and this aggressive woman would provide her with any useful information. While she hadn't seen them together yet she had the feeling, from knowing her slayer and from observing the woman earlier, that they would clash. And not in a good way.

But Willow was able to convince a visiting member of the coven to attend the meeting with her. She'd been friends with Tara since college. They'd joined the coven at the same time and though they now lived in different towns they still worked well together. A well balanced practitioner, Tara was much better at reading people, both psychically and emotionally than anyone else she knew. And Willow felt she would need all of the help she could get to figure this woman out.

Normally, in situations where they worked together like this, they would communicate using telepathy. But from the few things Dawn had been able to tell Willow and what she'd observed herself, they were fairly certain this person was sensitive to such things. Walking from the coven house, Willow and Tara had both agreed that they didn't want to risk the possibility that she might hear them or become suspicious so they planned to keep their use of telepathy to a minimum.

They entered the 'Coffee Garten' several minutes early. Looking around they found her already there, sitting at a secluded table near the back. As they headed towards her, Willow noticed how she seemed to startle and pale slightly when she saw Willow's companion, recovering quickly as if nothing had happened. But she also didn't miss how she was dressed less aggressively, in softer colors than she'd worn earlier, and relaxed slightly.

The woman gracefully gestured towards the empty seats across the table from her. "Have a seat ladies. Let's get you something to drink." She turned in her seat as they gingerly sat down and motioned to a waitress to come over and take their orders. She raised an eyebrow at their choices and Willow wondered what she was seeing.

While they waited for the waitress to return with their coffee, Willow silently observed the small woman for a few minutes, not quite sure how to start. "Who are you?" she eventually blurted out when nothing else occurred to her.

With a slight grin, as if she was letting them in on a private joke, she replied, "Summers, Buffy Summers." her tone suggesting that they should already know who she was.

Willow was confused. While she knew she was missing something important, she could almost feel an implied title in the way this woman said her name. She glanced at Tara for a moment for inspiration but only received a thoughtful frown from her and took that as a cue to begin. Tara was obviously seeing something she wasn't.

"Okay... Buffy..." Willow wasn't sure this was really her name and couldn't keep the doubt out of her voice. "I'm Willow and that's Tara. You wanted to talk? Go right ahead. Now's your chance."

Buffy looked at both of them for a moment as if measuring them in some way. "I hate to interfere in something that shouldn't concern me but your slayer so obviously needs help that I can't stop myself."

Tara and Willow looked at each other in surprise, Tara shrugging at her before continuing in her role of silent observer. "Why do you think she needs help?" Willow asked her. "And why does it matter to you?"

"I've been watching her for a couple days now. From what I've seen so far, the first experienced vampire she runs into is going to beat her. She doesn't really have what it takes yet to fight a very determined enemy." She shook her head. "And why am I making it my concern? Does it matter? If you really need a reason, think of me as a very distant relative." She smiled at that idea as if it amused her.

"What's wrong with her fighting skills?" sputtered an offended Willow. "She's been trained the same way the Coven has trained slayers for centuries."

"And how long does the average Coven slayer live after this training?" Buffy asked with apparent interest.

"Most of them... that we have records of... usually survive into their late 20's."

"That seems a long time for a slayer." she mused quietly. "How many vampires and other demons does an average slayer kill during their career? They can't be running into that many if they live that long."

"No, they kill a lot of vampires." Willow protested in a hushed voice to avoid attracting attention. "If Dawn keeps it up she'll be one of the best in over a century. It's her first year and she has already staked 20 vampires. That's twice as many as the previous three slayers in their first year." The woman across from her had a sudden coughing fit at the pronouncement. Willow glanced at Tara who raised an eyebrow at this.

Buffy wasn't able to completely mask her surprise at this information. Once she'd moved to her Sunnydale she'd fought a steady stream of vampires and demons on an almost nightly basis until the town was destroyed. Twenty vampires would have been an average week there. Either the vampires and demons of this world kept a very low profile or there just weren't that many of them. Or the Powers That Be were coddling the slayers of this universe by keeping them away from evil. Though she felt that was unlikely given the tendency for the Powers That Be in her home dimension to throw slayers into suicidal situations almost on a whim it was still a possibility to consider.

But no matter what the reason, as far as Buffy was concerned, their slayer wasn't getting enough of the right experience. "I'm sure that is impressive but it really isn't a lot even for a town on a closed hellmouth. I've staked ten vampires myself since coming to Sunnydale. And I've been here less than a week. If the vampire population has increased so much that she's already run into twice as many as her predecessors your slayer obviously needs to be trained better to improve her chances of surviving."

Willow gasped. "Ten? In a couple days? Why isn't Dawn seeing them if there are that many. And what does the hellmouth have to do with it? It's been closed for over a century."

"Why hasn't she seen them?" Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Well... they've obviously been watching her long enough to know her patrolling patterns. They must be intentionally staying out of her way. Or they aren't locals. And the hellmouth here in Sunnydale? It might be closed but it still attracts more vampires to this town than you would find in one without a hellmouth." Buffy was amazed that they were so unaware of it. "Can't you feel it? The subtle hum? And even closed it is still attracting all sorts of nasty evil. Your slayer isn't going to be ready if any older vampires attracted here decide to attack her. They actually think first, have a plan. From what I've seen, she isn't prepared for that kind of vampire. And if there's an apocalypse she isn't the only one who'll die."

"An apocalypse? Here?" Willow shuddered at the thought. "Why?"

"Yes here. If you look closely I'm sure you'll notice the signs." Buffy knew she was making a big assumption. She hadn't exactly been looking for such signs herself. She'd been too busy. But there had to be a reason she'd ended up in this Sunnydale. Her life really didn't have room for coincidences and an apocalypse seemed like the most likely candidate for her being there. "Don't know why, yet." She admitted.

"Are you offering to help with her training?" asked Willow. "If you don't think she's good enough to stop an apocalypse..."

"While I do plan to stick around for a few months, I don't recall volunteering to fix her problems." Buffy grimaced. "But if you need help with other things I'll be around."

"And how can we trust what you've said? That there is something bad coming?"

"I'm sure your silent friend can tell if I'm lying." Buffy gestured at Tara, who'd managed to keep quiet so far.

Willow blinked in surprise. Tara's ability to read other people wasn't known outside of the coven. There didn't seem to be any possible response to the revelation that this Buffy knew she was being tested so she ignored it. "If we took you up on your offer of help what exactly would you be offering to do?"

"Just lend an extra hand to help your slayer survive what's coming."

"What do you mean 'what's coming'?" a confused Willow asked her. First a mention of an apocalypse and now this?

"An apocalypse doesn't just happen on its own. Something evil is headed your way and your slayer needs to be ready. I can't tell you what it is yet but it's too quiet around here. Those vampires the other night were just the beginning." They didn't need to know she was making it up at this point. While her inbuilt slayer skepticism was insisting that something bad was going to happen she didn't have any proof yet. "But from what I've seen in the past that level of attention from vampires passing through won't last for long. It'll get much worse. And I'm sure somewhere in your books you'll find a prophecy predicting death and destruction in the next couple months. Something has to be drawing these vampires to your closed hellmouth."

"Why a prophecy?"

"Because there's always a prophecy." she said sadly. Her life seemed to revolve around them but she wasn't about to tell these women about that. "And it almost always predicts the death of the slayer or end of the world. If you're lucky you'll have enough time to prepare her for it and you can stop it from happening."

"If there is really an apocalypse coming what makes you think we can stop it?"

"You don't think your slayer being here at this time was a coincidence do you? It really doesn't work that way. And besides..." she grinned mischievously at them "you have me now and I never lose." Okay Summers, that was a bit much, Buffy berated herself. Not only are you trying to scare them when you don't know if something bad is going to happen yourself, but you are promising to help them. "You'll fix up your slayer, we'll fight some evil, save the world, party, and I'll go home."

Willow wasn't quite sure what to make of all of this. She didn't seem to be bragging so much as stating a fact. She filed her words away for future consideration when she had the time to really think about them. For now she needed to learn all she could about this Buffy person if she was going to be around for the next few months, possible apocalypse or not. And the easiest way to start was to involve her in the coven in some way. If she was evil or a danger to them it would be a lot easier to deal with her there. "I'm not sure if you are interested but we have training sessions at the coven house after school every day. Unfortunately you've missed today's." Willow looked at Tara, receiving her silent approval at the idea before continuing. "But if you would like to come with us now we can show you around."

"Where's your slayer at this time of day?" Buffy asked curiously.

"By now? She should be at home. After her training session, she spends the evening with her sister. We've tried to interfere as little as possible in her regular life."

"Good! Family is important. Gives a slayer incentive." Buffy hoped she didn't sound too enthusiastic. "Does her family know about her being the slayer? And what it really means?"

"Sort of. Her only family is her older sister. She knows that Dawn does things with the coven that requires her to spend a lot of time with us. But she hasn't been told exactly what. Her family has had connections to the covens for centuries so I'm sure she suspects some of what is going on." Willow shrugged and got up from the table. "But Dawn doesn't think her sister knows anything about the coven or its real purpose."

Buffy looked up at her quizzically. "I'm assuming you don't want me to say anything to Dawn about this."

"Correct." Both Willow and the still silent Tara nodded. "We don't try to keep many secrets from slayer families. It's just too destructive in the long run. But in the beginning we don't intentionally involve their families. They don't need the added stress of their families worrying about them while they are first learning. We'll have to sit down with both of them and explain it eventually. But for now that's just the way it is." She gestured towards the door in invitation.

Getting up from the table, Buffy and Tara followed Willow out into the sunlight.

vi. Singing the Blues at the Poetry Slam

Buffy walked silently behind the two women, curiously observing their interaction. They didn't seem to have that closeness of lovers but there was definitely something familiar in the way they seemed to complement each other. The way they brushed against each other, the way they seemed to stay within each other's personal space, as they walked bothered her in some way she couldn't easily identify.

She knew she couldn't be jealous of their obvious relationship. She didn't know either of them and had no reason to feel anything like that. And she knew what jealousy was like, the burning desperation and fear that you are going to lose someone to someone else. It wasn't anything like that. This was more of a feeling of missing something she'd never really had. The intense ache of a might have been.

The two witches were definitely an important piece of the puzzle she was trying to put together in her head. As she gathered information about the things that were different between this world and her own, Buffy hoped it would point her in the right direction for a way home. At least that's what she told herself as she watched them as she walked.

From the slight mental buzz she was getting from their direction she could sense that now that they were out in the open, they were using some form of silent communication, possibly something like telepathy. But even with her enhanced senses and the things her Willow had recently taught her she didn't have any way of actually understanding them. Telepathy was just not something she do could herself. She could hear thoughts directed at her but otherwise it was just so much background noise in her head.

As they walked she noticed Tara occasionally looking back at her, an odd expression on her face, as if she had a question she really wanted to ask but she wasn't sure whether to ask it or not. Giving in to her curiosity, Buffy decided to find out what was going on. "Tara?"

"Yes?"

"If you have a question, go ahead and ask it. I might not give you an answer but I certainly won't bite." Buffy continued, hoping she'd managed to say her name without displaying her feelings. She'd forgotten how much losing her Tara had hurt. The darkness she'd lived in since becoming a slayer hadn't just affected her. Tara's death was another failure in a long line of failures that haunted her dreams.

"H...h...how did you knnnow what I was doing?" she stammered nervously. "Back at the coffee shop?"

Not about to admit that she'd only guessed and her reasons for the guess, Buffy fell back on her earlier comment "That would be one of those questions I won't answer. I'm sure that wasn't your real question. What did you really want to know?" She smiled slightly in encouragement.

"Why is your aura so hard to see? It fades in and out, making it difficult to focus on."

"Oh, that." What could she safely tell them? She didn't think they were a danger to her but she wasn't quite ready to trust them. Everyone had an agenda; she just wasn't sure what theirs was yet. "It's a side effect of a meditation technique a friend taught me. She noticed that when I did it my aura seemed to get fainter." She shrugged. "We worked on it for a while and as long as I meditate using her method my aura is almost invisible. It also seems to make it harder for someone to read my mind." Buffy raised her eyebrows pointedly at them as they casually walked down the shaded sidewalk. "I can also tell sometimes if they are trying to do it." She added with a wink.

"Oh!" Tara blushed. "So that's how you knew what I was doing."

"Yes." she answered simply. She wasn't prepared to tell them how weak this ability to shield her aura and mind really was. They didn't need to know that a determined person could get past it. It really only came in handy when she was hunting vampires and minor demons anyway.

"So... you can do magic?" Willow asked curiously.

"No. Not really. Just simple parlor tricks like that. Nothing close to the things you can probably do. If I try anything complicated things can get a bit wonky." She smiled at them. "So I leave the real magic to the experts."

"Okay..." Willow answered as if she was ready to ask more about it. Buffy noticed Tara shaking her head slightly as if to restrain her. They both spent the rest of the walk to the house deep in thought, seemingly unaware of how closely Buffy was watching them.

Buffy stood on the sidewalk in front of the large house staring up at it for a minute while the two witches waited patiently. The house sat harmoniously among its neighbors. She was sure that Giles or Xander could have told her in great detail what kind of house it was but to her it was something else. It reminded her of warm nights in small towns, time spent with friends, and growing up. And small children underfoot. Nostalgia for things she'd never really had. Things that, being a slayer, she never would have.

The house had a wrap-around porch with clusters of inviting chairs scattered along its length. From where she was standing Buffy could also see at least one porch swing. She had to shake her head to rid it of the image of spending romantic evenings with someone gazing out at a moonlit neighborhood. That wasn't ever going to be a part of her life. It was a fantasy she'd given up long ago. She didn't have time for such thoughts.

The first step was a big one. Looking up at the two wiccans standing on the porch, Buffy was very reluctant to join them. She knew that her presence would change things for them. Not immediately but eventually the darkness she felt would envelope them. They were still innocent in so many ways. They fought evil on a daily basis but they'd obviously never been tainted by it like she'd been. But it was bound to happen. Just by her presence their lives would become darker.

Buffy cautiously mounted the porch and followed them into the large foyer. Looking around, Buffy could see a large stairway to the left leading up to the next floor like something out of one of those romantic novel her mother had been fond of, A long, wide hallway ended in a doorway she suspected led outside. The house was as welcoming on the inside as it had appeared to be from the outside. The faint smell of incense and cedar tugged at her nose. There were plants everywhere she looked; sitting on windowsills and hanging from the ceiling. There was no mistaking that the occupants of this house gave nature a prominent place in their home.

"There really isn't much to see." Willow began. "The training rooms, kitchen, and library are on the ground floor. The first floor is mainly meeting rooms and the rest of the house is split into apartments. Why don't we start with the library?"

She directed Buffy to a large room near the end of the hall. The room was lit by large windows along one wall. The other walls were covered in bookshelves. In the center of the room were several large tables with chairs pulled up to them. Scattered about the room were other, more comfortable looking chairs.

"All of the books in this room are available for anyone to use. We probably have the most in-depth private occult library in the area." Casually leaning against one of the tables, Willow continued, "If there's something you want to look up let us know and we can help you."

"Thanks. I appreciate the offer." Buffy was amused at the blatant attempt to find out what she was up to but managed to keep a straight face. "You mentioned training rooms?"

"Yes. We have two. One is primarily for coven use and any special classes we might have going on. The other is for general use by the community. Anyone who needs to use it can reserve it." She walked out of the library through another door down a short hallway to another door, the other two women following her.

They entered a smaller room. "This is where Dawn trains." She pointed out a number of interesting features. Buffy noticed she hadn't mentioned the mirrored wall they'd entered through.

"Does anyone else use it?" Buffy asked looking around the room. It had everything she could imagine a small training room having, though she assumed that any weapons were kept out of public view. She could see where it could be useful to have a mirrored wall though it wasn't something she'd often had in her own training rooms.

"Yes. She uses it every day. There are several other coven members who also use it occasionally. As you can see it isn't very large. It starts to feel crowded if we have more than five people in here at once. It works best for small groups. We use the other training room for our weekly self-defense classes."

"Who teaches those?" she asked curiously.

"I do." Willow answered proudly. "The coven doesn't just help the slayer. We believe in providing useful services to our community. And that's part of it. You're welcome to join us."

"While I would appreciate using your facilities, I prefer a little more privacy for that kind of thing." Buffy demurred.

"I'm sure we can accommodate you there." Willow looked at Tara who nodded briefly. "If you wanted to we could let you use Dawn's training room some time during the day when no one else needs it."

"That would be great actually. I haven't had a chance to find a local gym yet." Buffy wasn't really surprised at their offer after the comments in the library. They obviously wanted to learn more about her and seemed to plan on doing so by inviting her to spend time at the coven's house.

"Great! Did you have any questions before we finish our tour?" Willow asked.

"Yes, I was wondering what was behind that wall?" She pointed at the mirrored wall. "There's obviously something between this room and the library."

"Oh... that? We have several small observation rooms behind there. The entrance is in the short hallway we walked through." She reopened the door in the mirrored wall and walking over to a panel in the center of the short passageway, pressed on something Buffy couldn't see. A door opened onto a long skinny room. "Parts of the wall in the training room are one way glass. We've found it to be less distracting to anyone training to observe them that way."

"So, do you watch just Dawn or do you watch anyone else using the training room?" Buffy asked.

"Usually just Dawn. We can also tape any training sessions in here." Willow answered. "We've found that being able to show someone what they are doing wrong from a different perspective can be very helpful."

"So if someone doesn't want to be observed? What stops you from doing it?" Buffy asked, trying to suppress her long standing paranoia towards groups with different goals than hers.

"Well, then we don't watch them." Willow seemed confused by the question. "And the video cameras are in the training rooms so you would know if someone was taping you."

"Okay." Buffy was amazed at Willow's naivety but didn't pursue the matter. "You mentioned something about the rest of the tour?"

"Yes. There's plenty to see."

"Great. Why don't we wrap this up with a quick tour of everything else. I'm sure you both have other things to do this evening."

"What do you think?" Willow asked as they watched the short blonde woman stride off.

"You know she has some sort of mental shield. I can see through it occasionally but I didn't get a lot of solid information from her. What I read were mostly her emotions as we talked." Tara answered. "She's an interesting person."

"Interesting? How so?" Willow perked up.

Tara grinned at her before answering. "You mean other than the obvious, 'Willow Rosenberg couldn't keep her eyes off of her' kind of interesting? Or the 'is she really as straight as she thinks she is' kind of interesting?"

"Yes. Other than that." Willow blushed. "She's straight?"

"And this matters why?" Tara laughed at her.

Willow blushed again but ignored her comment. "What did you learn about her?"

"Well... she never actually lied to us but she wasn't always sure if the things she was telling us about the hellmouth were true."

"That's not lying?" Willow exclaimed.

"No... it was more like a lot of ifs and maybes." Tara shrugged. "She wasn't trying to mislead us. She just doesn't believe she can prove a lot of what she told us."

"So which things are true, beyond a doubt." she asked as she sat in one of the wicker chairs on the porch and motioned Tara to another. "And which aren't?"

"Her name really is Buffy Summers. And the things she said about vampires following Dawn are true. And how many she's staked herself since she came to Sunnydale." She looked puzzled for a moment. "She was really surprised at the number of vampires Dawn has staked so far."

"In a good way?"

"No. I got the impression that she was horrified at how few that was. And she's worried about Dawn."

"So, what about her claim to be just passing through and not wanting to help Dawn train?" Willow asked.

"Those are among the few real lies she told us."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think she really knows why she's here. Or at least why she's in Sunnydale right now." She shook her head. "And she might have said she doesn't want to help train Dawn but I think she plans to eventually."

"Where is she from?" Willow asked hopefully.

"I couldn't tell. That's one of the things she was working real hard to hide from us. But she really wants to go home." Tara shook her head. "But for some reason she can't. I couldn't tell why."

Willow filed that away for later. "How about people?" she asked. "Did you get anything from her on anyone specific?"

"You know how much I dislike reading people's feelings." Tara said, looking sadly at Willow who nodded, reaching over and squeezing her hand. "Especially after this."

"Why?"

"She's a very lonely person. I think she was broken and was never really put back together again. She looks at everything like she can't be a part of it and knows it." Tara shuddered. "It actually hurt to try and read her."

"I'm sorry. I won't ask you to do it again." Willow reached over again and gave her a hug. "Is she someone we need to watch?"

"Not if you mean as a threat." Tara answered. "When she thinks about Dawn it's like she's thinking about a sister. And you remind her of a good friend she used to have. Neither of you have anything to worry about."

"Used to have?" Willow asked curiously.

"I wasn't able to get much more than that. When she looks at you it's like she's seeing a former friend. And whatever broke them up really hurt her."

"Did anyone else around here affect her?" She noticed Tara shivering. "You don't have to answer that."

"No, it's okay. But I don't think I'll be spending a lot of time around her if she's going to be here for long."

"Why?" Willow asked surprised.

"When she first saw me... it was like she was seeing someone she loved who had died. And then something about that reminded her about her mother dying." Tara shivered again. "It was like an open wound. That shield thing she does couldn't prevent me from feeling her pain. I'm not sure I can take being around those kind of feelings on a regular basis."

"Okay." Willow gave her another hug. "As much as I appreciate your help I won't keep you involved if it is going to hurt you."

"Thanks." Tara said gratefully. "You'll just have to call me if anything interesting happens with her."

"How interesting?" Willow grinned at her.

Tara poked her friend. "You know what I mean Willow Rosenberg!"

"Okay, okay!" Willow held up her hands in surrender. "Was there anything else you noticed?"

"When we mentioned Dawn's sister she was very curious but nervous. I don't think she wants to meet her."

"Huh. I wonder why." Willow said.

"It wasn't really clear. Sorry." Tara got up from her chair. "I really need to get back. You know how to get ahold of me if you need anything."

"Okay." She hugged her one last time. "Thanks for helping out with this."

"Isn't that what friends are for?" Tara said before she walked over to the garage next to the house and got into her car, waving goodbye as she pulled out into the street and headed home, leaving Willow sitting on the porch swing, deep in thought.

Buffy spent the rest of her evening exploring the bars in and around Sunnydale. She was surprised to find that there wasn't one specifically run as a demon hangout. She was going to have to revise her opinion about where Dawn was getting her fashion tips. She did run into several harmless demons masquerading as humans in a few of the bars but she didn't feel any need to disturb them and they didn't seem to notice her presence.

There were several she took special note of. There was the traditional teenage dance club hangout. It wasn't quite the Bronze but it had a similar atmosphere. She didn't think she would be hanging out there unless she was forced to. And the name, "The Place", seemed a bit pretentious.

Near the local college, USC Sunnydale - a less grandiose school than the one she'd gone to, was a more sophisticated dance club. She could actually imagine spending time there, though not alone.

Of the remain half dozen or so bars in Sunnydale, the only one she felt any attraction to was a place called "Tony's Blues Pub." The name alone on the small nondescript sign almost sent her heading towards the next bar down the street. But the music leaking out into the street drew her in. The live music coming from a middle aged woman singing on a small stage in one corner of the bar was raw and sad, fitting her mood perfectly.

She wasn't able to stay for long, but she knew she'd be back. There was something soothing about the place. But for now she still had a slayer to follow and sleep to get if she wanted to be in any shape for job hunting the next day.

She spent the next morning and afternoon scouring the town, want-ads in hand, looking for some kind of job she could do that would allow her enough freedom to keep an eye on the inexperienced slayer and the coven. The job market in this Sunnydale seemed fairly stable. There didn't seem to be many jobs available except very late night waitressing shifts at several all-night diners and several clerk shifts at an all night convenience store. Things she could do but not quite what she was looking for.

A little discouraged, Buffy decided to spend the next day looking a little further away from Sunnydale in one of the other nearby towns. She wasn't quite desperate enough yet to take one of the employment options available in Sunnydale.

Passing it on her way back to her loft, ready to put the day behind her and relax, Buffy noticed a small plaque in the window of the bookshop she now lived above. In bold black letters it announced "Part Time Help Wanted".

Buffy wandered into the store on a whim after seeing the sign. She wasn't sure she really wanted to work around old books but the idea of living so close to a job was tempting.

She'd only met Madeline, the bookshop owner, very briefly the day before when she was shown the loft by the rental company. She'd gotten the impression that she was old in a well preserved, elegant way that had made the normally confident Buffy feel awkward and out of place. Nothing had been said later by the rental agent while she was reading over the lease when she'd mentioned job hunting. She wasn't even sure Madeline had really noticed her, so she wasn't quite sure what to make of the sign appearing now.

From the size of her loft Buffy knew the shop couldn't be that big. At least a third of it seemed to be hidden behind a doorway covered with a beaded curtain. The rest of it seemed to be packed with a large number of used paperbacks with one wall, to the left of the currently unoccupied counter, full of much older books. The titles seemed to be in a number of familiar looking languages but nothing she'd ever read.

Curious, she reached for one that seemed to draw her attention. Just as her hand touched its spine there was the faint, soft sound of footsteps coming from somewhere behind her. Jerking around, Buffy saw the shop owner emerging almost ghostlike from the curtained back room.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a husky voice.

Buffy found herself looking into Madeline's grey eyes, unable to look away. "Yes, you can actually. You have a help wanted sign up and I was looking for a job." she asked hopefully.

"Do you know anything about books?"

"Other than reading them?" Buffy gave her a small smile. "Not a lot."

"I see." she smiled but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Could you get that book for me?" she pointed at a large, leather bound book just above eye level on the shelf Buffy had been browsing.

"Sure." Buffy said. Her hand tingled slightly as she pulled it off the shelf.

Madeline took it from her, saying cryptically "They don't know who you are do they?"

Buffy looked at her in surprise. "Excuse me?"

Madeline just ignored her as if she hadn't said anything. "You'll do. It's only a part time job. I'm getting old and need someone to watch the shop in the afternoon."

"Great!" Buffy was surprised at how easy it was. "When can I start?"

"Why don't you take that sign out of the window. I'll show you where everything is and we can take care the paperwork. Tomorrow would be a great time to start." Madeline smiled at her again, this time for real.

vii. Smoothing the edges

Two weeks into her stay in Sunnydale and Buffy's days had settled down into a simple routine. After her morning run, she would spend at least an hour taking advantage of her open invitation to use the coven's smaller training room. When she'd finished there she would take a few minutes to browse through the books in the coven's small public library, hunting for some clue that would tell her how far from home she really was and looking for some idea on how to get back.

So far she'd found nothing solid, just very vague references to inter-dimensional travel. It was an amazing library, containing information about many unusual occult topics but it just didn't have the depth of even the Council's small research library in Cleveland.

Afternoons were spent working at the bookshop where she manned the counter and did odd jobs; the musty smell of the used books oddly soothing. Madeline had given her free reign to browse through the small collection of occult books she kept in the back for special customers. But so far she'd found nothing there either. She'd always had help in the past and it was starting to look like she just wasn't familiar enough with the things she needed to know to figure it out on her own. She wasn't quite ready to ask anyone for help but it was starting to feel like she would have to eventually if she ever planned to get home.

With only a radio to keep her company in the evenings, Buffy found herself spending several hours a night at Tony's Blues Pub, the bar she'd discovered when she'd first arrived. The music and the presence of other people filled a need she hadn't known she'd had.

And even though the music wasn't something you could really dance to and the energy in the room was a lot more subtle than what she'd become familiar with when she'd been younger, she found herself spending a lot of time there just basking in the calmness it made her feel.

Her brief interactions with the slayer and her Guide, and the bookshop's occasional customer weren't enough to make her really feel part of the world she was now living in. There were still times when she felt like she was observing things from a distance. But more often than not, the sounds of people talking over the backdrop of music that seemed to echo in her heart, sometimes raw and other times soft and soothing, gave Buffy a faint feeling of being grounded.

She still felt the same desire to burn as much energy as possible that had driven her when she first became a slayer, but there was something about the bar that smoothed the tattered edges of her control over it.

It was becoming a regular part of her day; Dawn spending lunch in her office complaining about Buffy Summers. First it had been about her use of Dawn's training room, now she was upset at being followed around while patrolling. Willow wasn't sure why the woman was taking a personal interest in her slayer when she'd claimed to have no desire to get involved but it was swiftly becoming an annoying situation.

"I know she's following me around!" Dawn said. "I can feel her. It's freaky!"

"Why don't you ask her to stop if it bothers you?" Willow asked curiously.

"Because I never see her! If I could I would!" she whined. "I don't want a babysitter. I can take care of myself."

"She isn't doing it just to annoy you." Willow said lightly.

"How do you know? She isn't stalking you!"

"No she isn't." Willow frowned. "There must be a reason. Why don't you ask her how she's doing it? Maybe you could learn something from her?"

"How do I do that? She's using my training room when I'm in school. In fact she's probably there right now!" Dawn grumbled. "And then she disappears until I go patrolling."

"She isn't disappearing." Willow tried to reassure her. "She must have found a job somewhere."

"You don't know that. She's probably rich and spends her days shopping while she waits until she can follow me around."

"No, I don't really know what she spends her days doing." Willow agreed. "But I'm sure it's something harmless."

"There's nothing harmless about that woman!" Dawn said. "Harmless people don't stalk slayers!"

Any further discussion was interrupted by the school bell.

"Why don't you head to your next class. We can talk about this more tonight." Willow said. "And Dawn..."

"Yes, Ms. Rosenberg?"

"I'll be late getting to the house after school today. I have to run a few errands. You can get started without me."

"Okay." Dawn answered. "See you later."

Willow watched her bounce out of the room, once more an almost normal teenager, relieved that all it took most days for Dawn to calm down was a sympathetic ear. At least her slayer didn't require physical activity to do that like some other slayers, the Boston slayer she'd met a few years ago being one rather extreme example.

Tony's was quickly becoming her preferred place to spend her evenings. She could just sit there and listen to the music and think about her day and contemplate the future as she sipped a glass of whatever was on tap that night.

It was the color that first caught her eye. She didn't much like beer and she was looking for something new to drink that didn't remind her of her past. Gazing at the top shelf she saw a bottle of some yellow liquid, almost amber like. Catching the bartender's eye she pointed it out, asking for a shot. He brought the bottle over, set a small glass filled with ice in front over her, and poured a shot into it while she watched. She raised an eyebrow at this and asked the simple "Why?"

"This isn't something you can drink quickly. It needs to be savored. To be enjoyed slowly. Like the Blues and all other good things in life."

"Is there really ever time to savor life?" She asked, not expecting an answer.

"Of course." He smiled at her. "And you must think so also or you would be down the street at one of those places where the music doesn't have a heart."

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yes. The people who come in here need something they can't get 'out there'" He gestured towards the door. "Even if they don't know it." After saying this he wandered away, leaving her to her thoughts.

That was her introduction to both Tony Denova, Blues fanatic and bar owner; and Yukon Jack, a liqueur that temporarily smoothed the aches in her heart, giving her a brief warm inner feeling without reminding her of the past.

She'd been waiting for the books for almost two months. While they weren't exactly rare they also weren't something she could get from her usual sources. Books of this type almost never showed up on any of the online auction sites like eBay, even the ones that specialized in hard to find mystical objects.

Willow wasn't sure why she was hurrying. Madeline had found the books specifically for her so it wasn't as if she would turn around and sell them to someone else.

She rushed into the bookshop. Finding the counter empty, she called out loudly "Madeline?"

"She's not here this afternoon." an almost familiar female voice quietly answered. "Can I help you?"

Turning around towards the voice, Willow found herself facing one of the last people she would have expected to see in a bookstore. Standing between several shelves, holding several large books and looking at her curiously, was Buffy Summers.

"Yes..." she said hesitantly. "Madeline left me a message this morning about some books I'd ordered."

"She didn't say anything before she left. Let me check in the back."

"Thanks." Willow watched her closely as she went around the counter into the back. The way Buffy seemed to move with silent precision reminded her of something but she couldn't quite place it.

After a few minutes she returned, carrying three books and reading a note. Placing the books on the counter, Buffy asked her "I just need to know if this is a personal purchase or if you wanted to put them on the coven's account? Madeline said it's your choice." she said waving the note.

"They can go on the account." Willow smiled at her. "Thanks."

"Great."

Willow watched her look at the titles and write something in a small book she'd taken out of a small drawer.

"Does the coven have a private library?" Buffy asked curiously. "These aren't the kinds of books I've seen in the coven's public library."

"No. Not really. I have a small collection of books in my apartment that Dawn uses." she shrugged. "Other than that, what you see is what we have."

"Oh."

"Have you been working for Madeline for long?"

"Just over a week." Buffy answer with a shrug. "She needed help in the afternoon and I needed a job."

"So you know a lot about books?" Willow asked curiously, trying to watch her without appearing to stare.

"I spent a lot of time around old books when I was growing up. But mostly just reading them. This is a completely different thing but I'm learning." She smiled at Willow.

"Oh." she said, watching Buffy wrap up the books in the brown paper Madeline preferred to plastic bags, insisting they were better for the books.

"Here you go." Buffy smiled at Willow again as she handed her the books.

"Thanks." Willow hesitated for a moment before continuing. "When do you finish for the day?"

"Usually around seven? Why?"

"Would you be interested in joining me for a drink some evening?" Willow asked nervously. "Not a date or anything. Just to talk?"

"Sure. Though if you want to talk you don't have to do anything special. I usually grab something to eat right after work and then most nights I'm at Tony's down on Wilson Street." She shrugged indifferently. "You're welcome to join me any time."

"Oh... okay. I might do that." Not sure what else to say, Willow looked at her watch, staring in surprise at the time. "Yikes! I've got to go. Bye!"

Buffy called out a goodbye to her as she hurried out the door.

Several days after her appearance in the bookshop Buffy was slightly surprised when she caught sight of an obviously nervous Willow in the mirror behind the bar at Tony's as she walked in the door. She really hadn't expected her to show up. Especially on a Friday. While Tony's clientele never seemed to change, no matter what the day, she was sure Willow would rather spend a Friday night somewhere else. Somewhere with dancing or other people her age.

"Shouldn't you be out dancing or something?" Buffy asked her as Willow slipped quietly onto the empty bar stool next to her. "There must be dozens of people who aren't having fun because you are here and not there." The dim light in the bar did little to hide Willow's slight blush at the comment from her enhanced eyesight.

"I can't sit here and enjoy the live music on a Friday night?" Willow asked her after a minute of silence.

"Sure." Buffy replied. "I'm just surprised. Let me get you something to drink." She raised an eyebrow in question.

"Thanks. A glass of whatever chablis Tony has this week."

"You know Tony?" Buffy asked her before waving him over.

"Not real well, but his sister is one of the original members of the coven." she shrugged. "I think he came to Sunnydale when she did."

"Really? Are there a lot of families in Sunnydale related to someone in the coven?"

"No, just a few. Families that have had something to do with one of the covens in the past do seem to gravitate to one of the towns they are in but it's nothing intentional."

"You've checked into it." Buffy smiled as she stated this, amused at finding something shared by her old friend and this Willow. Curiosity was apparently a multi-dimensional Willow trait. And a willingness to share what she'd learned was another.

Before she could answer, Tony was standing there looking at Buffy expectantly. "What can I get you and Miss Rosenberg?"

"Tony, if you could get me another," she gestured to her glass, "and Willow would like a glass of chablis. Thanks." She then motioned for Willow to continue.

"I was curious. When I first began working with Dawn I checked the coven records. I knew that her family had some connection to the covens, her mother mentioned it once." Buffy nodded. "I just had to dig for it. But I was surprised at what I found."

Tony once again interrupted their conversation. "Here you go Buffy, Miss Rosenberg."

"How'd you do that?" Willow asked her in surprise.

"Do what?"

"Get him to call you by your first name? I've known him for almost ten years and he still won't do that." Willow sighed.

"Oh, that." She grinned. "He's been trying to convince me to work for him. Someone told him he'd attract more business if he had young women tending bar and I'm the only person to come in here on a regular basis who fits that qualification. So he asked me. I said I would think about it."

"Oh." Willow took a sip of her drink. "Where was I?"

"You were going to tell me something about Dawn's family tree and the coven." Buffy encouraged her. She wasn't sure how long Willow would be so free with such information but she was willing to take advantage of it.

"Well," she took another sip from her glass, "a long time ago someone decided to start keeping track of not just slayers but their families as well. Magical ability is usually hereditary so the covens have kept track of coven families for as long as anyone can remember. If you look at both sets of records... there have been a dozen slayers in the last five hundred years from families with ties to the covens. It seems to skip a generation or two but there is a connection."

"How does that relate to Dawn?" Buffy asked curiously, wondering if the Council in her world had ever noticed such a connection.

"She's one of the rare ones. I haven't figured out what it is but there's something special about her family. She's the fourth known slayer in her family since we started keeping records. And there have been a half dozen slayer Guides from her family also, something none of the other slayers with coven ties have."

"Does she know this?"

"No. She's still adjusting to being a slayer." Willow stared at her glass for a minute in thought. "I don't think she's ready to know something like that. I'll tell her when she's settled down a bit."

"What about the other thing you mentioned." Buffy thought for a moment. "People in the town having ties to the coven?"

"That? That was the curious part. I wondered how Dawn's family ended up in Sunnydale and I also noticed a few uncommon surnames in coven records that matched the names of a few families in the area. Ones that had no direct ties to the coven." Noticing Buffy's obvious interest she continued. "So I started tracking them down and noticed that there are seven families that seem to end up in the same towns as covens with active slayers. And someone from one of those families usually ends up joining the coven once it has settled in a town."

"Do you think it is intentional?" Buffy asked. "Are they following the covens around?"

"I think something is influencing these families to move around like that. But as far as I can tell they aren't aware of it."

"How did you reach that conclusion?"

"Well..." she shifted nervously. "The families normally move to one of these towns a decade or so before the coven. And one of those families is mine. If it was intentional I think someone in my family would have mentioned it."

"Oh." Buffy looked at her in surprise. "Does the coven know about this?"

"They know I'm working on a more reliable way to find potential slayers." Willow told her. "They don't know the details yet."

"Really? How do you find them now?" Buffy asked. She'd always wondered how the Council had done it before her Willow's spell changed everything.

"There's a spell used by the oldest coven that they do every year the day after the Summer Solstice. But it doesn't tell us exactly where to find the person who will become the slayer." Willow frowned. "We can narrow it down to three places where there's a potential slayer."

"What happens then?"

"If there isn't a coven already nearby the closest established covens get together and select people to start a coven in the town nearest to where the spells say there is a potential slayer. It doesn't happen very often. There never seems to be more than three out there at a time."

"Huh." Buffy thought about this for a moment. "Probably because your slayers live so long. You don't need to replace them that often."

"It's a thought. But the whole thing is still a mystery." She noticed she'd finished her glass of wine while they'd been talking. "I should probably get going. I have to get up early tomorrow."

"Just a minute. I'll walk you home." Buffy waved at Tony and put some money down next to her glass before getting down off of her bar stool.

"You don't have to do that." Willow protested.

"I'll walk you home." Buffy insisted with a smile and guided her out of the door.

Willow noticed that Buffy seemed to be really deep in thought as they stopped in front of the coven house. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing much. I really enjoyed talking with you tonight."

"So did I. Talking with you I mean." Willow blushed. "We should do it again."

"Great!" Buffy smiled at her. She looked at her watch. "I'll let you get inside."

From the porch Willow watched her stroll away until she was out of sight, wishing she'd had the courage to invite her in, before heading up to her apartment.

viii. Training Day

She'd just finished her extended T'ai Chi routine when she felt herself being watched. Turning towards the door that led to the library, Buffy noticed that it was slightly open. The slight tingling she now felt on the edge of her senses had what could only be described as a smoky flavor. Buffy knew it could only be one person. Since arriving in this alternate Sunnydale, she'd found only one other person whose presence tugged at her slayer senses in such a noticeable way and the mental 'flavor' she got around them was very different, somehow sweet and tart at the same time.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" she said loudly. The door slid open the rest of the way and Dawn cautiously entered the room.

"The teachers are doing something today." Dawn said, closing the door and leaning back against it. She grimaced and continued. "Some kind of touchy-feely thing. So they gave the rest of us the day off." She looked at Buffy curiously. "What were you doing? It looked sort of like T'ai Chi."

"It is." Buffy smiled slightly. "There are several different styles. The first one I was taught is one of the longer forms."

Dawn looked at her for a moment. Nodding in acceptance, she asked, "Where did you learn it?"

"An old boyfriend spent some time in China a long time ago." Buffy said. "He taught me what he'd learned."

"Oh..." Though she was obviously curious about the boyfriend comment, Buffy could tell Dawn was trying to not appear too nosy about her past. "Why do you do it?" she asked.

"You mean besides the obvious physical benefits that come from practicing any of the martial arts?" Buffy shrugged. "It's a form of meditation. When I do it I feel a connection with parts of myself that I don't get with other forms of meditation that I've tried."

"Oh..." Dawn said again.

"You're a slayer, so you must do something similar." Buffy said to her. "Anything that helps you improve your control and focus your strength should be high on your training list."

"I've been learning to meditate but nothing like that." Dawn said. "It helps a little."

"Well, if you want to start learning T'ai Chi while I'm here I can at least help you with the basics." Buffy offered.

"Okay. Thanks. You don't mind if I watch, do you?" Dawn asked hesitantly.

"No, that's fine. I can't guarantee any excitement." she told her. "I'm just working on the basics today."

"Great!" Dawn said, settling down against a wall where she had a good view of the action.

Taking a break from a steady barrage of punches and kicks aimed at the sole practice dummy in the room, Buffy glanced over at the young slayer.

"Do you get a chance to spar with anyone?" She asked, trying to gauge her reaction to what she was saying without being too obvious about her interest.

"Some but not very often. Ms. Rosenberg works with me on different fighting techniques but I can't really hit her very hard." She looked slightly embarrassed. "I accidentally knocked her out once."

"Do you get a chance to train with any other slayers?" Buffy asked. She'd gotten the impression earlier from talking with Willow that there were several other slayers but the Coven's public library and the occult section in the bookshop had been empty of anything related to slayers or even more than basic information about vampires. This seemed to be as good an opportunity as any to find some things out.

"Not yet. All of the slayers in the three current slayer lines get together once every seven years." She said, leaning forward, propping an elbow on a knee, and resting her chin on a palm. "But I haven't been one long enough to have gone to the last meeting."

"What if one of the other slayers needs help?" Buffy asked curiously.

"We all help out then." Dawn said, playing with her shoelaces with her free hand as she talked. "But that hasn't happened in over a century."

Buffy filed that information away for later consideration, along with everything else she knew about this world's slayers. "If Ms. Rosenberg agrees I would be willing to spar with you once in a while. I can take a lot more punishment than she can."

Buffy knew she was partially changing her earlier decision to not involve herself in Dawn's training but she justified it with the thought that occasional sparring sessions weren't really the same thing. Also, the few vampires she'd caught stalking Dawn hadn't been enough of a challenge to satisfy her own need for close quarter fighting and she really missed working out with someone close to her own strength. And if that helped Dawn out at the same time it wasn't going to hurt her plans.

"I'll ask her tonight." Dawn looked up at her. "I can let you know what she says."

"She knows where to find me if she agrees to it." Buffy replied before going back to hitting the dummy.

"Great!" said an enthusiastic Dawn before she once more sat back against her chosen portion of training room wall. Buffy spent the rest of her remaining time working through an abbreviated series of the moves she and Faith had developed while training new slayers after the collapse of Sunnydale, well aware that Dawn was closely watching everything she was doing.

"Ms. Rosenberg?"

"Yes, Dawn?" She looked up from the stack of papers she was grading between classes.

"Would you mind if I sparred with Buffy Summers?"

"When?" She looked closely at Dawn, wondering when jealousy had turned into interest.

"Several times a week?" Dawn said hopefully.

"I'll have to think about it. I haven't seen her in action yet. If you can learn something from it, sure." Willow looked closely at her slayer. "If you are just trying to avoid your regular training I would have to say no."

"Is that a yes or no?" Dawn asked impatiently, shifting back and forth in front of her.

"It's a maybe." She answered quietly. "I'll need to talk with her and check her out myself first."

"Thanks!" Dawn said and headed off to her next class, dodging the students who had begun to pour into the classroom.

"Do you like her?"

Sitting behind the bookshop's counter, Buffy looked up in surprise from the book she was reading. The young slayer standing in the door seemed to exude an emotion she couldn't quite identify. She assumed it was related to the question which seemed to have come out of the blue. "Like who?"

"Ms. Rosenberg." Dawn said, the expression on her face telling Buffy that it should have been obvious to all concerned whom she meant.

"She does remind me of a former friend, except she seems several years younger. And much happier." Buffy answered, looking at Dawn thoughtfully, trying to discover the intent behind the question.

"Is that a bad thing?" Dawn asked.

Buffy didn't reply immediately, instead lining up the two Willows in her head and comparing what she knew about Dawn's Guide with her former friend. Other than the basic physical similarities, she wasn't able to do it to her own satisfaction. She just hadn't spent enough time with this Willow to compare them. She really didn't know her well enough to commit to more than the simple answer she gave. "No, it isn't. Why?"

"I think she likes you." Dawn told her.

"What makes you think that?" Buffy asked, gently closing her book, using a finger to keep her place.

"What has she been doing every night for the past week?" Dawn asked.

"What?" Buffy echoed, looking at her, slightly puzzled.

"In case you hadn't noticed it, this is a small town. People notice things and gossip. Rumor has it she's spent an hour or two at Tony's every night this week." Dawn leaned against the counter.

"So?" Buffy said.

"Everyone is curious." Dawn shrugged. "And since you seem to match the description of the person she's supposed to be spending that time with I thought you might have something to say."

"And why does this concern you? Isn't it her business what she does with her time?" Buffy raised an eyebrow at the younger slayer, who blushed a deep red before answering her.

"Why do I care? You mean other than her being my Guide? Or my responsibility?" Dawn took a deep breath and continued as fiercely as she could under the circumstances. "She's a friend. If you hurt her it won't matter how good you think you are. You'll pay for it."

"That's sweet. Sort of." Buffy grimaced at the protective young slayer. "But you're presuming a lot based on very little information."

"No? And the reason she's also been coming here, right after school all week?"

"She likes books?" a confused Buffy hedged in an attempt to avoid answering.

Dawn sighed in exasperation. "Are you this clueless all of the time?"

Buffy looked at her blankly, not quite sure she was really hearing Dawn say what she thought she was saying. And not willing to admit she understood her. She certainly didn't have any feelings for Willow other than possibly friendship.

"She doesn't know you're straight, does she?" Dawn said.

"Straight? That's an awfully personal question. And what does that have to do with anything?" Buffy looked at her, mystified. "The subject never came up."

"Okay, if you say so." Dawn frowned to herself. "And you know she isn't?"

"I had a feeling she wasn't but she hasn't said anything to me." Buffy said quietly. "I didn't think it was any of my business, unlike certain nosey teenagers. Why?"

"You don't think she might be interested in more than just friendship?" Dawn asked curiously.

"No." Buffy answered dismissively and, pretending to ignore Dawn, went back to her book in an attempt to end the conversation.

Neither of them said anything for several minutes.

Noticing Dawn still standing there and beginning to fidget, in an attempt to change the subject, Buffy asked her - "So, have you decided if you want to spar with me occasionally?"

"I do but Ms. Rosenberg wants to see you in action first. To see what affect sparring with you would have on my regular training." Dawn said with a slight shrug, no longer leaning against the counter. "I'm not sure how she plans to do it. She said she would talk with you."

"Okay. Was there anything else?" Buffy asked in a neutral tone.

"No, and I really have to go." Dawn said, heading towards the door. She slipped out of the bookshop with a slight wave to Buffy before heading down the street.

Dawn hurried into the smaller training room, pulling off her jacket. She'd managed to get to the Coven house just barely on time, even with her slight side-trip across town to the bookshop and having to dodge her Guide on the way back. Her visit with Miss Summers hadn't been very successful but she'd had to try.

She preferred to not interfere in Ms. Rosenberg's personal life but she couldn't avoid it in this case. It was affecting her choice of a potentially valuable training partner.

"That was close." Ms. Rosenberg said, entering the room and smiling at her slayer. "What happened?"

"Umm... I had to run an errand downtown after school." Dawn shrugged in an attempt to appear nonchalant. She must not have dodged her as well as she thought.

"Okay. What's our rule if you think you're going to be late and it isn't an emergency?" she asked.

"Let you know and don't rush. You would rather I was late than an accident happen." Dawn said in a serious tone, imitating her Guide's voice.

"Correct." She frowned at Dawn. "And in this case I'm not flattered with the imitation. I don't sound like that."

Dawn grinned at her. "If you say so."

"Yes, I do!" Willow answered firmly. "Now, go change into something more appropriate."

"Yes, ma'am." Dawn said, curtsying in an exaggerated manner before running off to the changing room.

After several minutes spent warming up, Dawn broached the subject currently most on her mind. "Have you had a chance to talk with Miss Summers about sparring with me yet?"

"What? No. When would I have time to check her out like I wanted?"

"Well, since you've spent a couple hours every night this week with her at Tony's you should have had plenty of time to 'check her out'" Dawn replied with a smirk.

"Hey! How do you know what I've been doing?" Willow exclaimed, not denying it.

"You've lived here your entire life and you don't know how much people like to gossip?" Dawn stared at her in feigned amazement.

"Oh.. oh! And I wasn't checking her out!" Willow sputtered.

"You weren't?" Dawn grinned at her. "People are saying you were getting awfully close. What were you doing then?"

"Not that it is any of your business," Willow huffed, "but all we've done is talk."

"It is my business!" Dawn told her firmly. "Anything that affects you affects me."

"I'm not that important. You would be a slayer whether I was helping you or not."

"I still need your help with things. And you were going to talk to her about helping me." Dawn said with a straight face.

"Okay... that was clever. But it still isn't any of your business." Willow shook her head.

"Do you like her?" Dawn asked.

"Would it bother you if I did?" she asked, tilting her head to one side as she looked curiously at Dawn.

"Maybe. I don't know!" she answered. "We don't know anything about her and you're ready to ask her to move in."

"Am not!" sputtered the blushing redhead. "And we know a lot about her."

"No, you and Tara know a lot about her. Which you won't share with me." Dawn grumbled. "You said it was all too personal."

"Yes, it is. And it has nothing to do with her being in Sunnydale."

"How can you be sure?"

"I just am." Willow said firmly. "And I believe you have other more important things to do than discuss my personal life."

"You do know she's straight? Right?" Dawn asked before taking a sip from her water bottle, giving it one last try.

"Yes. I know she thinks she's straight." Willow winked mischievously at her slayer. "Which means you have nothing to be concerned about. Your sister still has a chance."

Dawn coughed, choking on her water in surprise. "My sister? What does my sister have to do with any of this?"

"Isn't that why you are so concerned?" Willow grinned at the young slayer as she put her water bottle down on the bench.

"No! You with my sister is such an epically bad idea that I can't believe you said that." Dawn shuddered before grabbing the practice dummy and pulling it into the center of the room.

"Okay. I'll stop bringing it up if you'll stop trying to play matchmaker so you can have a sparring partner."

"What?" Dawn's jaw dropped.

"Yes, I do know what you are trying to do." Willow told her, shaking her head. "And it won't work. You should know better."

"Okay." Dawn muttered. "But if she won't spar with me because of you I won't be happy."

"You can't always be happy." Willow patted her on the back. "It'll work out the way it is supposed to."

After her conversation with Dawn, Buffy was only slightly surprised when Willow joined her in the smaller training room several days later just as she was finishing her normal T'ai Chi routine. "Don't you teach during the day?"

"All of my morning classes are on a field trip." Willow answered. "So I thought I would come see you. If you don't mind the company?"

"No, you're welcome to be here. I'm not doing anything exciting." She noticed what Willow was wearing. She'd only visited Willow in her classroom once her first week in Sunnydale and she was pretty sure she hadn't been wearing anything resembling the outfit she was now in. "Is that how you normally dress when you teach?" she teased.

"Oh, this?" Willow rubbed her hands nervously against the legs of her pink sweatpants and tugged at the half t-shirt she was wearing over what looked to Buffy like a spandex body suit. "No. It wouldn't be appropriate."

"Ah, I didn't think so." Buffy gave her a slight grin. "Your hormone drenched students would be too busy looking at you to pay any attention to what you were teaching. I certainly would have at their age."

"Yes, well..." Willow blushed slightly at the implied compliment.

"Did you have anything specific in mind?" Buffy asked, pretending to not noticed how nervous Willow seemed to be in her presence. She didn't mind spending time with Willow. In fact, their nightly conversations at Tony's had become the highlight of her day. But encouraging anything more than friendship wasn't a part of her plans, especially after Dawn had spoken to her about Willow's apparent attraction to her. It would complicate things more than they were already.

"I really wanted to see what you do when you train." Willow told her. "Dawn has been bugging me to let her at least spar with you and I promised her I would check you out. Check out your training methods I mean. Not that there is anything wrong with the other kind of checking out... unless it bothers you... because I certainly wouldn't do that..." she told her before coming to an obviously embarrassed stop.

Buffy raised an eyebrow at her rambling comment. This was the first time she'd exhibited such a classic Willowism in Buffy's presence and she wasn't sure exactly how to characterize the strange feeling it gave her in the pit of her stomach.

"Okay, we can do that, though you aren't going to learn much just watching me hit things." she said, gesturing at the practice dummy in the corner.

"How else would I do it?"

"You did train Dawn, correct?" Buffy asked. "You've worked with her on her different fighting techniques?"

"Yes... and I still do. I just can't match her strength or speed so I focus mostly on demonstrating the different moves she needs to learn or practice." She waved her hands around to emphasize her point.

"Then you can spar with me. I promise not to hurt you." Buffy grinned at her.

"You? And me?" Willow gave Buffy a wide eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look at the suggestion.

"Yes. Us. Vampires and demons seem a bit scarce right now so unless you can think of another way that doesn't involve physical contact there isn't much choice." Buffy gave her a slight smile in an attempt to appear harmless, mostly. "And I don't bite unless invited." she said, pretending to not hear the small squeak that came from Willow at her comment.

ix. Field Trip

Looking at the taller woman, red hair framing her face, for just a second Buffy could have sworn she detected something other than nervousness flying across her pale face. For that brief moment Willow's eyes seemed to take on an almost predatory gleam. Her sense of self preservation too well developed to dismiss it completely, Buffy filed it away for future reference although she knew she could have been mistaken.

They started out slowly, circling each other in the small room. Her mind quickly analyzing the situation, Buffy observed how Willow moved like a small cat toying with a mouse, looking as if she were playing a game and not doing something that could turn deadly in an instant. This went on for what felt like several minutes to her focused attention but which she knew could really have been only for a few seconds.

Suddenly, Willow stepped into Buffy's path and applied a move that would have knocked a normal person off of their feet. Buffy rolled with it, turning the move into a throw that sent the surprised Willow half way across the room. This went on for several minutes. Willow trying to gain the upper hand and Buffy turning every move against her. She could sense Willow's growing surprise at her ability to read a move and react to it so quickly.

After ten minutes of this, Buffy knew that if anything was going to be accomplished by this pseudo-sparring session with Willow, instead of turning into a big waste of their time time, she was going to have to initiate it. Unless she used magic Willow just didn't have the skill or strength to provide even the remotest challenge needed to display the things Buffy did best. The way things were going Willow wasn't going to learn anything that would help her decide if Buffy was a fit sparring partner for her slayer.

"Okay, that's enough," Buffy said to the red faced woman after her attempts to get past Buffy's defenses failed one more time. "This isn't really working. It's got the potential for some fun but certainly won't accomplish what you wanted. There must be another way to satisfy you." Buffy groaned silently as soon as the words left her mouth. She really hadn't intended to say it that way and from the look that appeared briefly on Willow's face she probably didn't want to know what Willow thought she'd meant by it.

Catching her breath, Willow looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Unless you can arrange to fight several demons and vampires while I watch, I don't know what else we can try."

"That sounds too much like a 'stupid pet trick'," Buffy said, objecting to the idea. "Except a little more deadly."

"A what?" Willow looked at her, her confusion clearly visible. Buffy closed her eyes for a second in an attempt to clear the distracting memory from her mind of her Willow's face scrunched in that same expression of cute confusion before explaining.

"Sorry. Pop culture reference from my childhood." She was really going to have to get a television. A world without a David Letterman was just too bizarre even for her life. "It's obvious that you aren't skilled enough to get past my defenses and I'm not going to just stand here and let you hit me. Dawn would quickly get bored trying to spar like that and certainly wouldn't get much benefit out of it."

"But you haven't really given me a chance to assess your technique." Willow grumbled. "I know you are faster and stronger than I am so you certainly would be a better sparring partner for her in that respect. But you're right. We aren't getting anywhere with this. I want to know what you can really do in a fight if Dawn is going to learn anything from you."

"So what do you want to do?" Buffy asked curiously.

"Maybe we should go on a field trip?" Willow suggested in a half serious manner. "There must be a place where vampires and other things congregate, where you can demonstrate the things you know?"

"Sure." Buffy agreed, partly to see if Willow was serious. "As long as it doesn't turn into a circus."

"Maybe we can follow her on her next patrol?" Willow proposed.

"And not let her deal with any vampires she's found? Is that fair to her?" Buffy asked, surprised at the suggestion.

"Well, you've been doing it for weeks now anyway."

"Yes... well..." Buffy said, slightly embarrassed. "I was just keeping an eye on her until I could figure out why all those vampires were following her."

"What did you find out?" Willow asked, distracted.

"Nothing yet. They're just cannon fodder. Whomever is sending them isn't telling them anything useful." Buffy tried to get the conversation back on track. "I guess we could head down to LA. Shouldn't be too hard to find something there willing to fight."

"Okay." Willow agreed reluctantly. "When?"

"No time like the present. Meet me at the bookshop tonight." Buffy suggested. "After you're done working with Dawn. We can have a quick dinner and then we can head south."

"Just the two of us?" Willow squeaked, giving Buffy a look she couldn't quite interpret.

"Yes." Buffy told her, wondering why the idea had gotten that reaction.

"What if Dawn insists on going with us?"

"If she asks," something Buffy really doubted would happen, "tell her it's a date." At the shocked look on Willow's face she raised an eyebrow. "You and I know it won't be but she seems so determined that we get together that she'll fall for it." Buffy wondered at the slightly disappointed expression that appeared briefly on Willow's face.

"Okay. I'll do that." Willow told her softly.

"Do you have to go back to your classroom yet?" Buffy asked her.

"No, I do have lunch duty today but I'm free until then."

"I need to burn off some excess energy before work." Buffy said. "Interested in a quick run down to the beach?"

"Sure." Willow smiled, her face lighting up at the invitation. "Let me get some different shoes. I'll be limping for the next week if I run in these." She pointed at her sneakers.

"Okay, I'll meet you out front?" Buffy said.

"Yes. I'll just be a minute. Thanks." Willow smiled at her again before rushing from the room.

Buffy set an easy pace as they headed down the street. While it was obvious to Buffy from their abbreviated sparring session that Willow was in pretty good shape they hadn't done anything approaching the strenuousness of her normal quick run. But this wasn't really about the exercise. She'd already had her run for the day. She just had an urge to spend more time with Willow before they both had to head to work for the afternoon.

It took thirty minutes to get to the beach from the Coven house. Buffy was just starting to feel warmed up but it was clear to her that Willow really needed a break. "I think we really need to work on your endurance." Buffy told her, bouncing on her feet as she watched Willow's sweat drenched form shakily sit on a bench near the beach entrance. "You're just like your slayer."

"What do you mean?"

"You're both all set for quick encounters with run of the mill vampires but that's not always how things work out. In a long fight you would both be dead." Buffy told her soberly. "It's not good."

"I have plenty of endurance." Willow protested, before adding with a smirk "just not for this."

Suppressing the image the comment brought to mind, Buffy pretended to ignore the innuendo. "Okay enduro-girl. Let's walk back so you have a chance to recover before our trip tonight."

"Not walking, running." Willow told her, shrugging off the helping hand Buffy offered her as she stood. "We'll see who has endurance."

Buffy watched in amusement as the redhead took off running, setting a pace she knew Willow couldn't keep up for long. Quickly catching up to her, Buffy asked "Are you sure you want to run this fast?"

Willow barely glanced her way, from the look on her face concentrating on proving Buffy wrong. "Not fast, can't you keep up?"

"Yes. Don't expect me to carry you!" Buffy told her, trying hard not to grin as she kept pace with the struggling woman.

The trip back to the coven house took longer than the run to the beach. Willow ran out of steam halfway and then spent a few minutes recovering before resuming at a much saner walk. They didn't arrive back at the house until almost lunch. Buffy barely had time to do more than take a quick shower in the small locker room next to the other training room before heading to work.

She had just finished locking the bookshop up for the night when Willow arrived. While waiting quietly in front of the shop for her to finish, she idly wondered why she found watching Buffy perform even the simple action of pulling down the security gate over the front of the shop to be mildly erotic.

Buffy slipped the key in a pocket and smiled over at her. "I hope you don't mind but I ordered out for dinner. It should show up in a few minutes."

"Where did you want to eat?" Willow asked, wondering if Buffy expected to eat in the car on their way to LA.

"If you don't mind the lack of furniture," Buffy said, "we can eat in my apartment."

Willow looked at her in surprise. This was the first mention Buffy had made of her apartment. In the weeks she'd known her, Willow had gotten the impression that Buffy was a very private person. So she had no idea where Buffy was living and hadn't expected to have the opportunity to see it any time soon. "That's fine. We can do that." She waited for Buffy to take the lead.

"It's just upstairs." Buffy told her, taking her arm and leading her around to the back entrance to the building. "I have a loft on the second floor."

Willow watched her unlock a door under a small overhang to the left of the back entrance to the bookshop, noticing how she reached in and turned on a light, revealing a stairway leading up, before going through the door. "This must be very convenient." she commented. "You can eat at home every day."

"It was a coincidence. Or at least I think it was." Buffy told her with a slight smile. "Madeline didn't advertise for help until after I'd moved in. We don't need to wait down here for the food. The delivery boy knows how to find the doorbell."

Willow followed her up the stairs, waiting on the top landing while Buffy unlocked another door. Following her into the loft she found herself in a large room with a small open kitchen to her right. The rest of the visible space was open so she assumed that a door to the left led to a bathroom of some sort. With the exception of a small bed that looked like a futon laid flat, a kitchen table with several chairs, and a large dresser that seemed to be built into one wall the loft looked barely occupied.

Glancing around Willow noticed several books lying haphazardly in a built-in bookshelf in a corner with several large cushions and a beanbag chair next to it. "You really were serious about not having furniture, weren't you."

"Yes." Buffy shrugged. "I was traveling fairly lightly this time. I don't really have a lot of money for furniture. It's not a big deal. This works for me. I don't need much."

"Okay. But if you ever want more furniture I'm sure we can find you some." Willow said to her, her mind already in motion as she envisioned how the loft would look with different pieces of furniture.

Any answer Buffy might have had to the offer was interrupted by the sound of a buzzer. "That'll be our food. I'll be right back."

Willow was looking at the books on the shelf when Buffy returned carrying several bags. They hadn't really told her anything about the other woman but she still felt slightly guilty for invading her privacy. She moved quickly away from them, trying to make it appear as if she wasn't being nosey.

"I know it's not much. I do most of my reading in the bookshop or the coven's library." Buffy said, placing the bags down on the kitchen table.

Willow blushed in embarrassment at having been caught snooping. "Sorry," she said, attempting to apologize.

Buffy just smiled at her, almost as if she'd expected Willow to look at them. "Why don't we eat? I hope you like spaghetti. Tony recommended this restaurant near his bar that has a fantastic sauce."

"Ooh... I know the one." Willow smiled, pleased. "They also have great salads and garlic bread."

"Great. Then you won't mind that I got us several salads to go with it." she told Willow as she carefully removed the warm food from the bags. "And garlic bread of course."

They ate dinner at a leisurely pace, keeping to the same topics they talked about during their evenings at Tony's, by mutual agreement avoiding anything overly personal. "We're going to have to do this again some time." Buffy said when they'd finished eating, taking note of the feeling Willow's bright smile and nod of agreement generated.

While she cleaned up, Buffy explained her idea for the rest of the evening. "I was thinking we could check out several demon bars in LA. I was down there a few weeks ago just to get a feel for the area and noticed a few places where demons hang out." she told her. "And then we can see if there is any action in one of the LA cemeteries."

"Do you think that'll give you a chance to demonstrate your fighting skills?" Willow asked curiously.

"Well, normally a human walking into a demon bar is an invitation for violence so it's almost guaranteed that you'll see me fight." She noticed the wide eyed look from Willow. "Don't worry. I'll keep you safe. And you do know some defensive spells don't you?"

"Yes." Willow reassured her. "Though I don't get to use them very often around here."

"You'll want to think about them on our way to LA tonight then. You'll definitely need to have them ready to go." Buffy put down the towel she'd been using and gestured to the door. "We should get going."

Buffy hid her grin at Willow's surprise when she reached into the closet next to the bathroom door and pulled out two motorcycle helmets. She handed one to Willow before taking out her leather jacket and pulling it on.

"Okay..." Willow looked in suprise at the helmet she was now holding before looking back up at Buffy. "I take it we aren't going by car."

"No. Two wheels." Buffy told her with a small grin before frowning. "Unfortunately, I don't have a spare jacket for you to wear. We won't get back until late and you'll freeze without one, so we'll need to stop at your apartment. You'll also need better shoes. Stiff boots would be even better if you have them. Sorry."

Ushering Willow out of her apartment, she led the way down to the shed she stored her motorcycle in, trying to suppress the extra spring in her step as she thought about finally being able to escape her reputation for being a bad driver. No matter how well she'd finally learned to drive, her friends and sister had never been able to let her past mistakes go. But this Willow would never know anything about her past issues with motor vehicles if she could help it.

Willow watched Buffy pull a motorcycle out of a small shed behind the bookshop. She wasn't an expert in such things but it certainly didn't look like something she wanted to ride down to LA on. "Are you sure about this?" she asked nervously. "I can always drive."

"No. This will be fine." Buffy gave Willow another grin. "Besides, it's not like we need to take anything with us. I've got everything we'll need in here." She patted one of the saddlebags.

Willow just stared at Buffy as she pulled on her helmet and got onto the motorcycle. It suddenly looked much larger with the small woman sitting on it. "I don't know about this..." she said, staring at it nervously.

"If you're afraid we can take your car." Buffy offered.

"Afraid? Me? A slayer's Guide is never afraid!" Willow told her with false bravado. She just hoped Buffy didn't notice how much the thought of flying down the highway on that contraption frightened her. She was sure it wouldn't impress her. She put on the helmet Buffy had given her and gingerly climbed onto the motorcycle behind her.

"Just put your arms around my waist." Buffy said, her voice much too calm for Willow's taste, considering what they were about to do. "And keep your feet on the footrests unless we've come to a stop."

"Okay." Willow put her arms around Buffy and held on tightly as Buffy started it up.

"Comfortable?" Willow could feel the vibrations of her voice through her jacket.

"I'm okay." Willow told her nervously.

"Great. First stop - your apartment." Buffy said.

Willow couldn't see her face but she was sure from the tone of her voice that Buffy must have had an amused grin on her face.

The trip down to LA hadn't turned out to be as bad as Willow had anticipated. Once she'd changed into heavier shoes and her favorite leather jacket she felt a lot more comfortable exposed to the elements on Buffy's motorcycle. The trip was too noisy for any real conversation so she'd concentrated on the feel of the machine beneath her and Buffy in her arms. Who knew when she'd get to do this again.

The journey ended abruptly in a well lit parking garage. After shutting off her motorcycle, Buffy pulled off her helmet and shook her head. "Helmet hair. Ugh!" Willow reluctantly released her grip on Buffy's waist and removed her own helmet. "There's a brush in the left saddlebag. Could you grab it?" Buffy asked her.

"How far are we from our first stop?" Willow asked, looking around after handing the brush to Buffy.

"About a block. Close enough if we have to run for it but far enough that we shouldn't attract too much attention." She took off her jacket and put it in the other saddlebag after removing several stakes and a knife and hiding them somewhere in her clothes. "Why don't you put your jacket in the other saddlebag. You wouldn't happen to know a spell that'll keep people from messing with it while we're gone?" Buffy asked hopefully.

Willow answered quickly. "Sure, not a problem." She looked at Buffy curiously. "What would you have done if I didn't know a spell to do that?"

"Locked it up and attached it to the nearest large immovable object. And hoped for the best." She shrugged. "If someone really wants an old bike like this you can't do much to stop them."

"Okay." She appraised the motorcycle for a moment. "This'll just take a second."

Willow muttered a few well chosen words under her breath. It wasn't anything complicated and for once she didn't feel like making it appear as if it was. "All set."

"Great." Buffy gave her a small smile and Willow couldn't help smiling back. "Let's get going."

They couldn't get into the first demon bar they approached. The four armed, grey, eight foot high demon bouncer guarding the door refused to allow them in citing a bar policy regarding humans. No amount of verbal gymnastics on Willow or Buffy's parts could convince it that the two women could take care of themselves in the bar and that they should be allowed in.

"It isn't a big deal." Buffy told Willow, dragging her away before the stubborn wiccan could prove it wrong. "There are other places we can go that aren't as picky about their clientele."

On the way back to the parking garage to get Buffy's motorcycle it became a moot point. Just inside the garage entrance they were attacked by several small demons.

Muttering to each other in some guttural demon language, the demons attacked both women at the same time. After putting up a simple shielding spell, Willow was able to protect herself from the larger of the two demons and keep it occupied with a binding spell while Buffy dealt with the other one.

Buffy seemed to be an almost elemental force as she fought her opponent with a combination of force and skill that amazed the wiccan. She wasn't just hitting the demon, she was picking its defenses apart. Every kick and punch seemed to be aimed at slowing the demon down.

Willow winced whenever the demon was able to get past Buffy's own defenses. But she seemed to bounce right back. The fight between the two seemed to last forever until Buffy knocked her opponent out by flipping it into a cement wall with a well placed throw.

At a signal from Buffy, Willow released the other demon from her spell. It had seen Buffy demolish its companion and approached her cautiously. It bowed to her and Buffy bowed back with a slight grin. They circled each other for several minutes before the demon saw an opening and attacked. In an exchange that to Willow looked more like a dance than the deadly fight it was, the two combatants traded a series of blows and kicks.

From what she could tell, they seemed to be evenly matched. And from the grin on her face it was apparent to Willow that Buffy was actually enjoying herself. This went on for several more minutes before the demon stopped and bowed once more to Buffy, saying something to Buffy that Willow wasn't able to hear. She was surprised when it walked over to the other demon and kicked it until it got up. Both demons left without a backward glance.

Willow looked at the slightly battered blonde. "What happened?" She'd wanted to see Buffy in action but this wasn't quite what she'd envisioned. "Why did it stop?"

Buffy shrugged. "We passed their test. The next time we want to get into their bar they won't try to stop us."

"Oh. Do you have to do this often?" Willow asked. She couldn't imagine being challenged like that on a regular basis.

"No. Normally demons don't stop until they're dead or they've killed you. Things seem a bit more civilized around here. But it was fun." Buffy smiled at her. "Haven't had a workout like that in weeks. Let's go check out the other bar."

"Okay." Willow quickly removed the protection spell from the motorcycle and climbed on behind Buffy.

To Willow their second stop looked more like a club than a bar. It was in a well lit area in a more upscale area of LA. There wasn't a convenient parking garage nearby so Buffy had been forced to park her motorcycle further away. They walked the last two blocks on foot. Stopping for a moment to observe the club, Willow noticed a steady stream of both humans and demons gathered around the entrance.

"Buffy?"

"Yes?"

"I don't think you'll have much opportunity for action here." She felt slightly disappointed. Watching the earlier fight had been exciting for the normally peace loving witch.

"That's not a problem. The night is young. You'll have plenty of other chances to see my Jackie Chan imitation." Buffy grabbed her hand and dragged her to the entrance. "Let's get a drink. We can hit a cemetery or two on the way home if you still need to evaluate my fighting style."

"Okay." Willow allowed Buffy to pull her into the club without further protest. She looked around and stared. She wasn't sure what she'd expected but karaoke and demons was not a combination she'd ever thought she'd see. "Buffy?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever been in a demon karaoke bar before?" she gestured at the stage off to their left where a tiny, winged creature was enthusiastically mangling a Cat Stevens song.

"No..." She followed Willow to an unoccupied table and sat down. "I've heard of them but I don't remember ever being in one before." She motioned to the waitress she'd seen near their table.

They spent the next hour watching the other occupants of the club. Buffy pointed out the different demon species she was familiar with and Willow did the same. Between them they had a good idea of which ones were an immediate danger and which ones could be safely ignored. What they couldn't figure out was why humans and demons were mixing without violence.

Their quiet conversation, mixed intermittently with pained glances at the current demonic attempt to display musical prowess, was interrupted by a cheerful voice.

"Ladies! How are you enjoying the entertainment?" asked a slim, green, and apparently male demon dressed in a suit that seemed to match the club's decor. "I don't normally get such illustrious visitors in my humble club."

Willow stared at him. "Who? Us?"

"Yes, sweetie. You." He leaned forward, smiling at them. "But don't worry, I won't tell anyone that the Chosen and her witch are here." He smiled conspiratorially at them and turned to leave with one last comment - "Enjoy the rest of your evening ladies."

Willow stared at Buffy, noticing she seemed to have suddenly gotten much paler. "What was that all about?"

"Ummm... I don't know." Buffy told her nervously. "I think we should go. If we stay here much longer we won't have time to hit a cemetery on our way home."

Buffy leaned against a grave stone, absently twirling a stake in one hand and watching Willow who was perched on a small crypt, hopefully out of harms way. She'd rushed Willow out of the club after their encounter with the green demon. She wasn't sure what was going on but this was the second time since arriving in this place that someone had recognized her as more than she appeared to be.

So far she'd managed to deflect Willow's questions about why the demon had referred to her as chosen but she knew it wouldn't last. This Willow was just as single minded in pursuit of knowledge as her former friend. She was just glad that there was more than one slayer at a time in this dimension. Otherwise Willow might have immediately connected chosen with being a slayer.

The cemetery was unnaturally quiet. Buffy could sense several vampires at its edges but they hadn't wandered over to where she and Willow were waiting. Suddenly, that changed as she sensed several vampires much closer, as if they had just appeared out of the ground. She motioned to Willow to alert her to their presence and waited patiently for them to come to her.

There were four of them, three young ones who growled as soon as they saw her and an older one, a female vampire that stayed back as the others rushed to attack. Buffy quickly staked the first vampire as it lunged at her, not giving it a chance to get too close. "Oops?" she said with a small grin.

The other two came to a shocked stop and stepped back to wait for the fourth vampire to join them. "Little girl, you shouldn't have come out here if you didn't want to die." the older vampire growled at her from a safe distance.

"Afraid I won't have time for all of you?" Buffy taunted it. "There are plenty of stakes to go around."

The female vampire looked at her two minions and told them "Kill her!"

Buffy tensed slightly as they rushed towards her. From the way they mindlessly attacked she knew they weren't really going to be much of a challenge. But if she wanted to deal with the older vampire before any others wandering around the cemetery joined in she first needed to get them out of the way.

The first of the two vampires to reach her was slowed down by a low kick that broke its left knee. She followed that with a kick to its chest that sent it tumbling into a nearby tomb stone where it collapsed and remained. With it temporarily out of the way she was free to focus on the other vampire now menacing her. This one displayed the typical vampiric approach to fighting. It attempted to kill her using brute force, knocking her into the side of the crypt Willow was sitting on.

Getting back to her feet, Buffy returned the favor with a blow to the vampire's head that knocked it to the ground in a heap. Before it could get back up Buffy had reduced it to a pile of dust with a well placed strike from her stake. She dealt with the other unmoving vampire in a similar fashion.

"Looks like it's just the two of us." Buffy told the remaining vampire, grinning as she strolled closer to it, resisting the urge to tease it and staying just out of reach.

"They were weak and stupid." the vampire growled before attacking Buffy. From her perch on the crypt above them Willow watched as they traded blows, neither one gaining the upper hand for several minutes. The vampire had a longer reach than Buffy but Buffy was able to compensate with little trouble. Eventually, the vampire gave Buffy an opening and she quickly staked it.

"That was kind of disappointing." Buffy said, grumbled as she brushed a few stray specs of post-vampire dust from her jeans. Reaching up, she helped Willow get down from the crypt. "Let's go home."

They arrived back in Sunnydale just after 2:00 AM. Drowsy from the trip, Willow asked a subdued Buffy to drop her off at the Coven house. The trip to LA had given her more things about Buffy to think about than any concrete answers. But analyzing what she'd learned would have to wait until tomorrow. She need to get enough sleep to function in her classes in the morning.

"Buffy, can we talk about this later?" She asked, yawning as she removed the helmet Buffy had loaned her.

"Okay. Tony's? Or somewhere else?" Buffy asked quietly, taking the helmet from Willow and attaching it to her motorcycle.

Willow looked at her for a moment. From Buffy's tone she could tell there was something wrong. It bothered her that she wasn't sure what it was. "The Coven house might be best." she answered. "Why don't I give you a call in a day or two?"

Buffy nodded at her and without another word kicked her motorcycle to life, leaving Willow standing on the sidewalk watching her ride away.

x. Who Are You?

Willow shielded her eyes against the bright April sun pouring into her bedroom. She felt like she hadn't slept at all. She glared blearily over at the alarm clock on her night-stand. It was insisting with a loud blaring noise that she needed to get up, now! Leaning over, she fumbled for the alarm's off switch before falling back against her pillow.

She was unable to remember when she'd fallen asleep, her thoughts occupied with the maddening puzzle that was Buffy Summers. She'd tossed and turned for hours, her head still buzzing from the evening's events. The trip to LA hadn't provided her with the insight into Buffy's character that she had been looking for. Instead, it had only added to her confused impression of the other woman.

Dwelling on the continuing mystery to the exclusion of all else, even her normal thoughts about Buffy, she stumbled out of her bedroom. Her surroundings barely registered as she removed her pajamas and climbed half awake into the shower. The stinging spray of hot water on her face and shoulders and the scent of her favorite shampoo did little to clear the fog from her mind. Not even switching to freezing cold water and ducking her head under the cold spray for a few, brief, agonizing seconds just before getting out of the shower seemed to help.

Pondering the previous evening's activities, Willow couldn't quite get a grip on what she'd seen. During the two fights she'd witnessed, Buffy had almost seemed like two different people. While she'd been almost frighteningly efficient in both fights, during the first she'd been eerily calm, letting the demons set the tone for the encounter. It was almost as if she'd sensed that it was a deadly test of her fighting skills and not just a fight to the death. There had been a recognizable method to everything she did. If that had been it Willow would have gladly welcomed her as a sparing partner for her slayer.

But a completely different side of Buffy's personality had emerged when she'd fought the vampires later in the cemetery. As she dried herself off in her usual methodical fashion, Willow kept coming back to the image in her head of Buffy as someone who seemed to take some delight in the violently physical encounters. She couldn't ignore seeing that there had been an extra viciousness present in the battle with the vampires that hadn't been there during the earlier fight with the demons. She hadn't really been fighting them. She'd dismantled them and torn them apart almost as if they'd seriously offended her merely by existing.

In more ways than one it had felt to Willow like she was watching someone hunting. For the brief moments that the vampire encounter had lasted it had been as if Buffy were playing with them. Like a large wild cat playing with a mouse. She had the distinct impression that if she hadn't been there the fight would have lasted a lot longer. And that attitude was not something she really wanted Dawn to emulate. It went against everything the Covens emphasized in Slayer and Guide training.

But earlier that evening at the karaoke bar, between the different battles, she'd been the witty, knowledgeable person Willow had come to know over the past few weeks. That Buffy was someone she could definitely see herself spending time with. Someone whose presence she really enjoyed. And someone she could trust with her slayer. She didn't know where to begin in reconciling these different images into one she could understand.

Looking in her mirror after she'd finished dressing, she frowned, realizing that she'd subconsciously dressed in what her friends called her people armor, clothes that let her blend in with the crowd and hide her real feelings. Clothes her mother would have dressed her in when she was a lot younger. She groaned but didn't have the time to find something else to change into, instead heading into her kitchen.

Sitting at her kitchen table deep in thought as she idly sipped her coffee, she really wasn't sure what to do about the situation. She'd carefully watched Buffy over the past few weeks as she made use of the Coven's facilities. She'd also seen how Buffy interacted with the people around her. She seemed to be very careful about what she said or did. Almost as if she were trying to avoid being noticed. And from that and the previous night Willow wasn't sure if she really knew enough about either Buffy's training or character to make the right decision.

Willow sighed and rubbed the back of her neck in frustration. She was going to have to look much deeper before making a decision about Buffy's participation in Dawn's training. She needed to know more about her past, where she'd been, and who the world thought she was before she could decide how to proceed. That was much more important than her personal life. Her interest in getting to know Buffy on a more personal level would have to wait for now. Once her slayer was taken care of, then she could decide if she even wanted to be more than friends with the very complex person she was discovering.

As she washed her cup and straightened her kitchen before heading to school, Willow decided to start her investigation with the things she'd learned the previous night. There were a number of things she couldn't ask Buffy directly without arousing her suspicions and would have to check into herself. Beginning with the demon at the karaoke bar. It had seemed to know both of them. Willow was certain she'd never met him before and from Buffy's reaction she'd obviously never met him before either.

But the information she'd gleaned from the friendly green demon's comments seemed a good place to start. And from there... everyone left some sort of trail when they interacted with the world. A trail she could follow. Unfortunately, Wednesday was her busiest class day so she wouldn't be able to pursue her expanded investigation into Buffy Summers until her evening session with Dawn was finished.

Following a quick dinner after sending a protesting Dawn home early, Willow put the first part of her plan into action. Fortunately, searching for information to explain what the demon in the LA club had called Buffy Summers wasn't the onerous task it could have been. A few years ago, as part of a college project she'd managed to create a computerized index of all of the Coven's books, turning a seemingly impossible task into the merely tedious.

After spending several hours on the task, she came to the conclusion that there was nothing in the Coven's library or in her own personal collection to explain the title 'Chosen' the way the demon had used it. While it did appear in a number of the older texts, none of the references seemed to fit Buffy or the current situation. She would have had to be a slayer for them to apply and that was impossible. Not only was she very different from any slayer she'd ever met or heard about but the Coven kept track of all the slayers, even the ones who worked independently, and she wasn't one of them.

She did find it interesting that Buffy hadn't seemed surprised at the title the demon had given her or the reference to herself as her witch. It was as if she'd heard it all before. She'd seemed to fold in on herself though, Willow thought, as if it brought back painful memories. If being called 'Chosen' caused such a reaction in her it was obviously an important clue. More important than any of the other things she'd seen or heard while with Buffy the previous night. She just had to figure out what it meant.

When a search of the other resources she had access to through the Coven came up empty, Willow decided to take another tack. She was obviously going to have to try a different approach to solve the Buffy mystery. She'd been relying on Tara's psychic examination of Buffy and hadn't gone the extra step of looking for physical traces of her or her travels, electronic or otherwise. It was possible the answers she was looking for were in the places she should have checked first, in the government records and private databases she'd avoided searching until now.

Hours later, just before sunrise, Willow stared at what she'd uncovered. Whomever had created her identity had been very good but not good enough. Just over a month ago there had been no such person as Buffy Summers. It was as if she had suddenly appeared out of thin air. There was no record of her past prior to day of her encounter with Dawn. Nothing to indicate where she'd learned everything she seemed to know. Which was seemingly impossible. Unless she'd fooled Tara there should have been some trace of her somewhere in a database, something older than what she was able to find.

Not quite believing this, Willow could only assume that there was some flaw in the programs she'd written years ago. It had been so long since she'd needed to exercise her hacking skills that she must have done something wrong. Something that prevented them from sifting through the vast quantities of information they could access around the world and finding what she was looking for. Not even the fingerprints she'd managed to copy had yielded anything. But figuring out what was wrong would have to wait until she had the time.

For now she would have to go back to the tools she was more comfortable with. With a little help from Tara she could use magic instead of technology to track Buffy's origins. Rubbing her back and looking at her watch, Willow checked the time to make sure it wasn't too early to call Tara.

"Tara? I need help with a spell. The one you use to trace someone." She listened attentively for a minute. "Yeah. That one. Who? Buffy Summers. No, she isn't lost. Something has come up and I just need to know where she's been the last two months." She put down the phone after receiving Tara's answer. Now she just had to make it through a day of teaching until Tara arrived. Sleep would have to wait.

Letting Tara into her apartment late Thursday evening, Willow hugged her before directing her to her study. The ingredients Tara had requested for the spell were already laid out on her work table, waiting to be used.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tara asked her, looking at the table for a moment before turning back to Willow with some concern.

"Yes. I really need to know who she is." Willow said. "I've checked everything and everywhere I can think of. And found nothing useful. As far as I can tell a month ago she didn't exist."

"She wasn't lying about her name." Tara reminded her as she laid out the things she'd brought with her. "Or her feelings."

"I know. But that doesn't make any sense." Willow grumbled. "I even tried to check her fingerprints." Willow blushed at Tara's raised eyebrow. "Someone went to some effort to put her in all the right places but if you look closely it's all fake."

"Willow? Why are you so upset?" Tara asked quietly. "We've already checked her out. No matter what the computers say she is real." She looked closer at her friend. "Don't we know enough about her?"

"How can I trust her around Dawn or the Coven if we don't really know who she is or where she comes from?" Willow asked.

"Are you sure that's the only reason?" Tara asked her with a small smile.

Willow blushed before shaking her head and answering her question. "Tara, I really like her!" she told her nervously. "I really do. I can't explain it. When I'm standing next to her the world feels brighter, more real somehow." She dropped down with a sigh onto the window seat next to the table.

"But?" Tara asked with a small frown.

"What if what I feel isn't real?" Willow looked down at her hands. "What if that's all an illusion? There was something different about her when we were in LA Tuesday night. Something older, more focused. It was kind of scary. I felt insignificant next to her."

Tara looked at her, sitting there like a small, lost child. Willow had obviously not slept well for several days and the situation was preying on her insecurities. "Let's do the spell before we worry about something like that." she told her gently, gesturing to the table.

Willow watched Tara carefully as she worked through the spell. The Slayer covens preferred to use simple spells. Except for the occasional ceremony, they rarely used flashy looking magic, instead going for the simple and direct approach. Willow's magical training and skills were geared towards helping her slayer, to protect her and deal with magical threats as quickly as possible. The kind of spell she needed here operated at a completely different level. It invoked forces that Willow rarely worked with and that required a more subtle approach.

Tara was the coven's local expert with this other style of magic, her movements sure and controlled as she blended the necessary ingredients together, occasionally murmuring an invocation to one of the coven's patron deities. Watching her almost hypnotic movements served to calm Willow.

"Okay." she told Willow, after steadily working on the spell for almost an hour "Where did you want to start?"

Willow placed several maps on the table. "I think we should start at least a month ago." she told her. "Several days before Dawn first met her. If we could find out where she was before she came here..."

"Okay. We'll need the map of the world." Tara told her. "She could have come here from anywhere."

Willow pulled out the map Tara had requested and placed it where she indicated. She watched avidly as Tara sprinkled a portion of her concoction above the map, murmuring several words under her breath as she did so, too low for Willow to make them out. There was a flash and the potion seemed to be absorbed into the map without leaving a trace.

"That's odd." Tara told her in surprise. She sprinkled more of the potion on the map, varying her incantation slightly. The results where the same.

"Did she change her name?" Willow asked curiously.

"That wouldn't affect this spell. It works with her aura and since that is unique her name doesn't matter." Tara thought for a moment. "We know what day Dawn met her. Let's start there and work our way back."

Several hours later, they were no closer to an answer than they'd been before. The results had them baffled. They'd ended up with a reasonably clear idea of Buffy's travels since she'd met Dawn. Nothing too surprising. But everything before that was just a blank.

"Willow, I think you are just going to have to ask her what you want to know." the blonde Wiccan told her, stretching and rubbing the back of her neck. "Something is preventing me from seeing what she was doing before she met Dawn."

"Okay..." Willow said reluctantly, sighing. "I'll ask her tomorrow night."

"Don't worry about it. We know she isn't a danger to us." Tara reminded her. "You're just going to have to do this the hard way, by trusting her to tell you the truth." She started packing up her tools. "I need to get home. Why don't you give me a call this weekend after you talk with her? Okay?"

"Okay." Willow agreed before following her to the door and escorting her to her car.

It had been a quiet Friday afternoon in the bookshop. In one of her rare afternoon visits Madeline had kept Buffy busy cataloging the books in the shop, starting with the ones out front. Sitting at the counter and idly looking through the Sunnydale Chronicle during a much needed break, Buffy could hear Madeline puttering around in the back, busily unpacking a large box that had arrived that morning.

She stared out of the window facing Main Street. The people passing by on the sidewalk and going about their daily business seemed oblivious to the storm her enhanced senses were warning her about. Giles would have called it a metaphor for her life. She had just started to feel comfortable with her current situation and the people she was coming to know in this place. She wasn't looking forward to the chaos it could bring but Buffy knew she had to head back to LA soon. She needed to find out what the green demon had meant when it had spoken to her and to see if it knew anything that could help her get home.

She hadn't seen Willow since their trip to LA two days earlier and while she knew there was no reason to expect her to show up every day, she'd still felt cheated by her absence from Tony's the past few evenings. Sighing, she tried to steer her thoughts away from the redhead, with little success. She knew she'd reacted badly to what the demon had said but she hadn't been able to help it. From Willow's continued absence she assumed she hadn't hidden it as well as she'd hoped.

The soft, solid sound of two books being dropped onto the counter brought her attention back to where she was sitting. Startled, Buffy looked up to find Madeline gazing intently at her over the top of her reading glasses. "What's this?" she asked curiously.

"Things you'll need." Madeline told her simply as if that was all the explanation she needed to give her.

Buffy cautiously picked up the top book and flipped through it. It was a slim volume, written in an almost familiar language. But not familiar enough to enable her to read it. "Why do I need something I can't read?"

Madeline smiled at her cryptically before pointing at the other book. "This should help." She then turned to leave using the front door, pausing just inside the door to remark cryptically - "Have you ever wondered who the first guardians of the Chosen were?" before disappearing into the evening pedestrian traffic before Buffy could respond.

Buffy sat there for a few minutes, just staring at the door until she was able to overcome the surprise she'd felt at Madeline's comment. This wasn't the first indication she'd gotten that Madeline knew more about what was going on in Sunnydale than anyone else she'd met there so far. But she was also very good at avoiding providing any opportunity for Buffy to learn more than she was willing to share.

Shaking her head, Buffy went back to her inventory. Madeline trusted her enough to let her finish it on her own and she had no plans to disappoint her. The books she'd given her could wait.

By the time she was done it was dinner time and all she wanted to do was spend the evening soaking in her tub. She'd been unable to resist purchasing her favorite soaps and bath oils when she'd seen the over-sized tub in her rented loft. It was one of the few luxuries she'd allowed herself in her loft.

Tonight she planned on skipping her normal evening visit to Tony's and soak in her tub. She didn't think anyone would miss her, especially the absent Willow. And if Tony was interested in her company he would get plenty of it when she helped him out at the festival the following afternoon. There was plenty of time to relax and soak out the day's dust before shadowing Dawn on her normal patrol.

The rain had been sudden, catching her umbrellaless on the way to Tony's. Once more shaking her damp hair, Willow looked around the bar, unable to hide her disappointment. She'd been sitting at the bar for several minutes and had yet to see Buffy anywhere. They hadn't talked since the LA trip but Willow had expected to find her at Tony's like always. She'd planned on confronting her with what she and Tara had discovered. Accidentally running into her at the bar had seemed like the best way to confront her with her questions. It was one of the few neutral places where they could talk. But she hadn't counted on her not being there.

"Tony? Have you seen Buffy Summers?" she asked, smiling hopefully at him when he came to take her order.

"She's not here tonight." He gave her a sharp look. "You might want to try her at home."

"Thanks." She said, her small bubble of courage suddenly deflating. From his expression she could tell he wasn't happy with her for some reason, but she just couldn't find the energy to care. It had taken a lot out of her to screw together enough courage tonight to come looking for Buffy. She had nothing left to deal with anyone else.

Without saying anything further, she turned around and made her way out of the bar, back into the rain, intent on heading home. She knew it was silly but she didn't feel comfortable with the idea of going to Buffy's apartment uninvited. It was a long damp walk back to her apartment, the rain drenched town perfectly matching her mood.

Standing in the park in the early Saturday morning mist, Buffy stared in disbelief over the lid of her cup of coffee at the booth Tony was assembling. "Why did I agree to this?" she asked him.

Pausing for a minute and pretending to think, he answered her with an amused "Because you love me?"

"Not enough to do this..." she told him with a wink before taking another sip from her steaming cup.

He waved at the stack of cups on the booth's counter and the beer and wine kegs lining the back. "All the beer you can drink?"

"You know I don't drink beer unless I'm desperate. Not even the stuff you serve." She reminded him with a small smile, peering curiously over the side of the booth.

"Guilt?" He tried again, grinning back at her.

"Guilt for what?" She asked with a raised eyebrow as she watched him put up posters for his regular bands along the back of the booth.

"At all of the money I'm not making because you won't come work for me." At her frown he tried again - "Because I offered to pay you? And I said it would be fun?"

"Ah..." she perked up. "That would be it. You promised me fun and money and food. But you didn't say anything about the cute guys." She pouted at him, waving her free hand at the other booths going up around them.

Tony gave her a look. "I didn't think you would be interested in the scenery."

"Huh? Why not?" Buffy frowned at him again but he just shrugged and winked at her before putting the finishing touches on his booth. Buffy looked around at the other local businesses setting up their booths for the Sunnydale Chamber of Commerce's annual Spring Fest. Most of them seemed to be restaurants or bars. Madeline had been amused when she'd suggested a booth for the bookshop but hadn't objected when she'd asked for Saturday off to help out Tony.

"So what do you want me to do...?" she asked, finishing up her coffee and tossing it into a nearby trash can.

Following the crowds, Dawn dragged a reluctant Willow into the park. "Come on!" she said excitedly.

"Tell me again why we're not at the beach with your sister?" Willow grumbled to her slayer as she looked around in amazement at the park in the early afternoon. It was full of people gathered around booths for every imaginable business in Sunnydale. She hadn't realized it had become such a big event. It was only the second year the Chamber of Commerce had managed to put it together. She'd missed the Festival the first year. She'd spent that weekend with Dawn in a retreat in a small resort north of Sunnydale, introducing her to visiting Coven elders who'd wanted to meet their newest slayer.

"Why are we here?" she asked again.

"You have to check this out!" Dawn insisted. "I think the Coven needs a booth next year."

"Dawn, we don't need to advertise like this." Willow said quietly. "Everyone who needs us knows how to find us."

"Could you at least mention the idea the next time you meet with the Elders?" Dawn pleaded.

"Okay. Now what did you want to show me?" Willow looked around, nothing really standing out and still not sure why Dawn had wanted to come.

"All of the restaurants in town have booths here." Dawn told her eagerly. "And they are all supposed to have free samples."

Willow groaned. "Why am I not surprised." She looked at her slayer's happy grin. "Didn't you already eat lunch?"

"That's not the point. Look over there..." Dawn pointed off to one side. "Even the local bars are here. Do you think they'll serve me?" she asked with a knowing grin as she dragged Willow in that direction.

"No. Definitely not!" Willow firmly told her. "They know better."

"Ms. Rosenberg!" Dawn pouted. "I've been good. Not even a small cup?"

"We'll see." Willow mumbled. She wasn't going to pretend that Dawn wasn't a normal teenager but she would only bend so far, even for her slayer.

By this point, even with Willow's token resistance, they'd reached the section of the festival reserved for the local bars. Willow, not interested in drinking in public on a Saturday afternoon, attempted to steer Dawn quickly through to the adjacent section of booths to a tent set up for anyone sampling the available food. Her journey was interrupted when Dawn yanked on her arm and pulled her in the direction of one of the busier booths.

"Is that who I think it is?" she asked.

Willow stared through the crowd. Serving drinks and chattering away to Tony Denova in his booth was Buffy Summers. Stomping down on her feelings to keep them under control, Willow attempted to stay detached as she watched Buffy apparently enjoying herself and the attention of her audience of young men.

"You didn't tell me she was going to be here!" Dawn scolded her. "Let's go say hello."

"I didn't know" Willow admitted morosely, staring at the blonde with a sad expression on her face. "You go ahead. I'll see you back at the house later for training." Her attempt at flight was stopped only briefly.

"Aww... come on." Dawn gave her an encouraging smile. "I bet she'll be glad to see you."

"No, I have other things to do this afternoon." Willow protested, finally pulling her hand free. "I'll see you later." And she slipped into the crowd, intent on heading home and avoiding any questions from the frowning slayer she was leaving behind.

"Any chance for a sample?"

Feeling a slight tingle and hearing a familiar voice, Buffy turned around to see Dawn patiently standing next to her side of the booth. Raising an eyebrow at the young woman she pointed at the legal age sign at the back of the booth and told her - "Sure, if you don't mind something non-alcoholic."

"Aww..." Dawn gave her a pleading, puppy dog look.

"Sorry, not gonna work." Buffy told her firmly, handing her a cup of soda. "And what would your sister and Ms. Rosenberg think?"

"My sister is at the beach." Dawn told her with a shrug. "And Ms. Rosenberg ran away as soon as she saw you, otherwise we could ask her."

"She did what?" Buffy frowned at her, feeling herself blush.

"Ran away." Dawn said, looking at Buffy with a strange expression on her face. "Said she had something better to do than come over here."

"Oh." From the look Dawn gave her, Buffy was sure her disappointment was plainly visible. In an attempt to distract her, she put on her best perky cheerleader face and gestured at the busy festival. "What do you think?" she asked.

"Not bad. Are you going to drop by the house afterward?" she asked eagerly.

"No, the Festival runs until dark. And then it'll take an hour to pack everything up." She shrugged. "I'll probably just head home afterward."

"Oh. Well, I'm going to check out everything else. Do you want me to let Ms. Rosenberg know where you'll be?" Dawn asked with what Buffy guessed was an optimistic smile.

"It doesn't matter." Buffy watched her shake her head in response before leaving. Struggling to regain her positive attitude, Buffy returned to serving the crowd around the booth.

Dawn's early Sunday patrols, when she typically tried to cover the entire town in a single sweep, were usually long and boring. She hadn't seen anything and wondered if someone else was killing her vampires. It certainly gave her plenty of time to think. She still didn't know if she would be able to spend any time sparring with Buffy Summers.

The last time she'd asked her Ms. Rosenberg had mumbled something to her that sounded like she was still thinking about the idea, but Dawn knew something was going on. Her Guide had been buried in musty old books and scrolls for the past few days, stopping only for her classes at the high school and when she'd managed to drag her to the park the previous day. She'd never seen her so obsessed with whatever was bothering her.

Lost in thought as she wandered through several cemeteries, Dawn was no longer confident in her earlier feeling that something was going to happen between the two women, if it hadn't already. She'd felt sure enough about it a week earlier to confront both of them but since then she'd started having doubts. The few times she'd seen them together since then she hadn't noticed any recognizable signs of attraction between them.

Having seen how Ms. Rosenberg normally acted around other women she'd been interested in, her current behavior was very puzzling. She hadn't even wanted to go back to the festival when they'd finished training for the day. Not even when Dawn had mentioned that Ms. Summers would still be there. They'd both acted strangely at the festival and she wasn't quite sure what to think.

Dawn occasionally caught a slight tingle at the far reaches of her enhanced senses. Since it never got closer she assumed it was Ms. Summers keeping up her daily bit of slayer stalking. A demon or vampire would have attacked her instead of just watching from a distance.

Just as she reached her backyard, the sudden crash of thunder and smell of ozone caused Dawn to reflexively jump backwards. That had been almost too close, she thought with a shiver. And suddenly, with no warning, she was blinded by a quick series of flashes. It seemed as if she was in the middle of a severe thunderstorm or a fight between two powerful magic users. And with no way to escape.

Buffy tensed. The air in Sunnydale had felt charged with electricity all evening, though at a just barely noticeable level. While it hadn't increased much as she shadowed Dawn during much of her early morning patrol, the feeling that something was going to happen seemed to suddenly increase as Dawn reached her street. Buffy was starting to feel like she'd stepped into a large bubble of static electricity. She was sure that at any moment her hair would start to stand on end if it wasn't already. She was surprised she wasn't glowing from the amount of energy that seemed to be in the air.

At the moment Dawn entered her backyard Buffy heard a large crashing noise, almost like thunder. Rushing forward, she was knocked off her feet by a wave of energy just as she reached the edge of the yard. Staggering quickly to her feet in the now static free air, Buffy could see Dawn lying in a crumpled heap in the yard, not far from where she'd last seen her.

There was a brief stillness in the air. Rushing to the fallen slayer, and picking her up, Buffy carried Dawn towards the only available shelter she could see. In an attempt to reach safety before anything else happened she carried the injured girl onto her back porch. As she pounded on the door, Buffy could feel the air around them starting to charge again. She was about to put Dawn down and apply force to the situation when the inner door opened.

xi. Sister Mary Sunshine

It was a peaceful, almost surreal dream. She was sitting under a large tree across from a school sharing a picnic lunch with Willow. Several other people she didn't recognize but whom felt very familiar were also there. They were laughing about something, just enjoying each other's company when the peaceful scene was interrupted by a loud banging somewhere far away. She struggled to stay asleep, to stay in this peaceful place, but failed. She could feel herself being roughly pulled from the dream by the loud sound.

Beth awoke with a gasp. Struggling against the blankets tightly wrapped around her body, she attempted to sit up. When she managed to free herself she noticed that it was pitch black in her bedroom. The noise that had yanked her unceremoniously from her dream was becoming louder and more strident. She grabbed her bathrobe from where she'd thrown it when she'd gone to bed and stumbled out of her room.

Standing in the upper hallway she could tell the sound was coming from the back of the house. Attempting to put on her robe in the dark, Beth hurried down the stairs towards the kitchen. Reaching the door she turned on the kitchen lights and looked around. The sound seemed to be coming from someone banging on the outside kitchen door. She could just barely see a dim shape through the layers of doors.

Opening the inner door, Beth found herself staring through the screen into the face of a woman whose eyes radiated a confusing combination of pain and coldness. Breaking away from the intense gaze she looked down and noticed to her horror that this person was carrying her unconscious sister. Gasping, and breathing in sharply she became aware of the faint odor of ozone.

While she was standing there in shock the woman somehow kicked open the screen door and barged into the kitchen, pushing past her through the kitchen and into the living room, where she deposited Dawn on the couch in an oddly gentle manner.

"What's going on?" Beth demanded after recovering from the shock and following them. She suspiciously watched the woman examine her sister.

"Don't really know." the woman answered gruffly in a soft voice. "Found her like this out in the yard. She seems to be okay, just unconscious. You should probably have her checked by a doctor when she comes to." The woman stood up and stepped aside to allow Beth access to her sister.

Beth looked at her sister, checking for broken bones, a bump on the head, or other injuries that could explain her condition but couldn't find anything obvious. Getting up from her side, Beth turned around and found herself staring into the woman's pale face, a face that was oddly familiar. "What's going on!" she asked again, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

"I have to go." the woman told her, "You need to call Willow Rosenberg if you want an explanation. She can tell you. It isn't my place to interfere."

"Interfere with what?" Beth asked desperately in an attempt to find out what had happened.

The woman, seemingly ignoring her question, headed to the front door. "If Willow needs me or has any questions she knows where to find me."

"What do you mean, she knows where to find you?" Beth asked, still confused.

Stopping in the doorway the woman simply repeated "Willow knows where to find me," before she closed the door behind her and disappeared into the night. Beth stared after her for only a moment before heading to the phone.

The phone rang in short staccato bursts, stopping after a few rings before resuming, waking her from a deep sleep. It was obviously someone who wanted her and not her voicemail. Willow groaned and briefly contemplated hexing whomever it was before grabbing the phone off of her night-stand with a few choice words uttered at the unknown caller.

The flashing green caller id display told her it was Dawn's home number. Looking over at her alarm clock in confusion she wondered why Dawn wasn't calling her emergency number, the one they'd set up months ago that caused every phone she owned, including her cell phone, to ring with a special tone. If she was calling this late it was almost a guarantee that it was some kind of emergency. Muttering curses in three different languages, Willow took a deep breath and picked up the handset to answer the call.

"Dawn, this better be good!" Willow growled into the phone.

"Dawn? Why would she be calling you at this time of night?" Willow heard Dawn's sister asking in a tone of voice verging on hysterical. Ignoring the question, Willow asked her own, dreading the answer.

"Beth? What's wrong? Did something happen to Dawn?"

"Yes! I don't know!" Beth said, almost shouting.

From prior experience Willow could tell she was very close to a meltdown and talked soothingly into the phone in an attempt to calm her down. "Why don't you take a deep breath and tell me what happened."

"Something happened to Dawn!" Beth shouted at her.

"What happened? Is she okay?" Willow asked as she climbed out of bed and quickly hunted for something to wear. She knew she needed to get over to Dawn's house as soon as possible but she needed to calm her sister down now.

"That woman said she was just unconscious." Beth said.

"What woman?" Willow asked, trying to focus on the call while dressing.

"The one who brought her home." Beth told her. "She seemed to know you."

"What did she look like?" Willow asked as she pulled on her shoes. When she didn't get an answer she repeated herself in a louder voice - "What did she look like?"

"I don't know. I think she had blonde hair and she was my height. She told me to call you and then she left."

"Okay. Keep an eye on your sister." Willow told her in the same calm voice she'd been using earlier. "I'll be there in five minutes."

"If you aren't I'm calling the hospital!" Beth told her. "She's just lying there, Willow. It looks like she's asleep but she won't wake up!" Willow could hear the panic starting to creep back into her voice.

"Okay! I'm on my way." She turned off and put down the phone, running over in her mind the few things she thought she might need. From the little information Beth had given her she wasn't real sure what to take other than her smaller emergency medical kit. She also grabbed what Dawn had dubbed her emergency witch-kit. Throwing a few stakes and a small knife into a pocket, she locked up her apartment and headed outside to her car.

As she climbed into her car she had the feeling that someone or something was watching her. Looking around, she couldn't see anything. The feeling disappeared as she started her car and she dismissed it as paranoia caused by stress. Taking a deep breath, Willow backed her car out of the Coven's garage and headed across town to Dawn's house as quickly as she could without attracting the attention of the police who patrolled Sunnydale so early in the morning.

Hidden in the shadow of an old oak in the front, Buffy watched Willow leave the Coven house. She knew she should have stayed with Dawn until Willow arrived but meeting her sister had been too much after finding Dawn like that and she'd chickened out. Seeing someone who looked like an innocent, younger version of herself had shaken her more than she'd expected it would, especially after spending the last month around Dawn and Willow.

She sighed and pulled herself together. She might not be ready to talk with Dawn's sister but maybe she could catch Willow on her way home afterward. Dawn had been stunned and knocked unconscious by whatever had happened but she hadn't seemed to be hurt otherwise. It wouldn't take Willow long to determine there wasn't anything she could do until Dawn woke up.

Willow shifted nervously from foot to foot before ringing the doorbell. This wasn't how she'd planned on telling Beth about her sister's destiny. She'd thought maybe over dinner at some neutral location some time in the future, not after she'd been injured while out on patrol. But apparently Fate had other plans.

"She's in the living room." Beth told her, gesturing her in. Willow could tell from her nervous stance that she was just barely holding herself together.

"Thanks." She said, giving her a quick hug before hurrying into the house. Stopping for a moment to look around, she took a deep calming breath. She needed to stay calm, for all of them. Her slayer was lying on the couch, her boots and coat removed and a pillow under her head. Unless this was something Buffy had done, Beth had herself under better control than she'd thought. Looking at the pile of items on the coffee table in front of the couch, the stakes, bottle of holy water, a knife, all things that must have come out of Dawn's pockets, the tools of the slayer's trade, she decided it must have been Beth while she waited for Willow to arrive. She shook her head and placed her bag next to the couch.

Examining Dawn, Willow couldn't find anything visibly wrong with her. There didn't seem to be any broken bones or other physical injuries. She seemed to be more asleep than unconscious at this point. Taking another deep breath, this time to center herself, Willow examined her aura, looking for some clue to her condition. Her aura seemed a bit fainter than normal, closer to that of a normal person than a slayer, but other than that she couldn't see anything wrong.

"Why don't we get her to bed and then we can talk." She gave Beth her most encouraging smile.

"How? She's too big for even both of us to carry. I'm not sure how that woman managed it. And she's unconscious." Beth protested. "We'll drop her."

"She'll help us." Willow calmly explained. "She's not really unconscious. It's more like a very deep sleep. We just need to wake her up enough to help us get her to bed."

"Not unconscious?" Beth gave Willow a disbelieving look. "What do you mean? She won't wake up! I tried!"

"She probably was unconscious when you tried to wake her earlier, but now..." Willow hesitated. "We don't really want to wake her up completely, just enough to get her to bed. And she's probably going to sleep until noon, if not later." Willow turned back to Dawn and bent down to talk quietly in one ear.

It was a harsh light. Moaning in protest, she tried to cover her eyes. Her arms wouldn't respond. They were there, she could feel them, but she didn't seem to have any control over them. Her entire body seemed to be a heavy lump of unmovable something. There but not. The only sensation seemed to be a heaviness.

The light became much brighter and it was now accompanied by sounds. At first a murmur. Steadily growing louder. Fighting the panic brought on by the feeling of helplessness that engulfed her, swallowing against the taste of vomit in the back of her throat, she tried to make sense of the sounds.

Blinking her eyes furiously against the light, she moaned louder. Words in her head came out of her mouth as sounds with no meaning. She could hear a voice gently talking to her. Telling her to do something. Telling her to sit up.

As if in a dream, she sat up, not really aware of where she was. She could feel someone supporting her on either side and she followed their pull, just barely standing under her own power. The voice kept whispering in her ear, telling her when to move her feet, when to lift her legs. This went on for a long time, stopping only when she could feel herself being lowered onto something soft. Exhausted by the movement, Dawn collapsed into a deep sleep.

"Is there any chance we can discuss this tomorrow?" Willow asked hopefully after they'd come back downstairs. "Dawn should probably be a part of this."

Beth visibly hesitated before agreeing. "Okay. Why don't you come over after dinner? And Willow?"

"Yes?" she answered.

"Can you at least give me a clue about what is going on? And who that woman was?"

"As much as I would rather not..." Willow thought for a moment before giving her a sad smile. "Have you ever really thought about the real purpose of the Coven? Why it is in Sunnydale? And what your family's past involvement with it has been?"

Giving the visibly startled blonde another quick hug, Willow paused for a moment to say something she was sure she would regret before letting herself out. "And that woman? I'm still not sure who she really is. Goodnight Beth."

Walking out to her car, deep in thought, Willow was startled by the slim woman leaning against it.

"You probably want to know what happened." Buffy stated.

Willow stared at the other woman in surprise. She hadn't expected her to just appear like that. She'd thought she would have to hunt for Buffy in the morning to find out her version of what had happened during Dawn's patrol.

"What happened tonight? Or are you going to finally explain why you've been following Dawn around for the past few weeks?" Willow reached past her and unlocked her car, motioning her away from the door so she could get in. Looking at the now silent woman she decided it wasn't worth the effort this early in the morning, especially after having already dealt, however briefly, with Dawn's sister. "Never mind. If you want to talk you know where I live."

"Willow..." Something in Buffy's tone stopped her. The faint glow from the nearest street light was too dim to really make out her expression but something about the way she was standing told Willow enough about Buffy's emotional state that she decided to change her mind. "Why don't you come back to the house with me?" she asked encouragingly.

"Okay." Buffy softly answered before moving to the other side of the car. She waited until Willow was sitting behind the wheel before climbing in herself. She was silent, staring straight ahead, all the way to the house.

Observing her carefully, Willow motioned towards the porch. "Why don't I get us something to drink." she told her quietly. "We can talk out here."

"Okay." Buffy answered again in the same tone of voice before getting out of the car and following Willow to the house.

If it had been Beth, or even Dawn, that tone and posture would have had her reaching for her supply of tissues in preparation for a long emotional crying jag. This wasn't the first indication Willow had had that Buffy was not as solidly grounded as she appeared, but coming from this seemingly tough woman Willow wasn't sure how to deal with her in this state.

Quickly putting together a tray of tea and assorted crackers in the main kitchen, Willow hurried back out to the porch. She didn't think that leaving Buffy alone for more than a few minutes would be a good idea if she wanted her to open up. Walking over to where she sat, leaning against the wall, Willow handed her a steaming cup of tea. She then sat back in her favorite chair and watched Buffy for a few minutes before saying anything. "So... did you want to tell me what is going on?" she asked in her most sympathetic voice, developed from years of experience with Summers girls and emotional upheaval.

"Frankly? No I don't." Buffy took a sip from her cup before continuing. "Tea cures anything, doesn't it." she said bitterly.

"No, it honestly doesn't." Willow corrected her. "But it helps."

"I really thought I could do it." she told her with a sigh.

"Do what?" Willow looked at her face over the top of her steaming cup, wondering what she was missing.

"I have a sister." Buffy started as if talking about the weather. "Just like Dawn, though she isn't a slayer. She was always very enthusiastic about everything and everyone. I tried to protect her from all of the bad things out there. I really tried. But I couldn't save her from everything." She gave Willow a sad look. "It just wasn't possible."

"What happened?" Willow asked gently.

"I had to go on a trip. She couldn't go with me, it was too dangerous. A friend promised to keep her safe, to keep an eye on her." She shook her head slightly. "Not that I had to ask, they were very close." Willow noticed she was rubbing her arms as if she was feeling a chill. "An old enemy came looking for me while I was gone." She stared blankly into the distance. "When it couldn't find me it took its frustration out on my sister. I came home as soon as I heard. She almost died. She hasn't spoken since."

Willow stared at her in horror. She hadn't expected anything like this. "What happened to the friend?"

"She killed it but she was badly hurt, worse than my sister. She was in a coma for over a month." Buffy looked over at Willow. "And it was my fault it happened."

"How? You weren't there."

"I should have known that something was going to happen. I should have been there, protecting them both."

"It sounds like your friend tried."

"Yes. She did. She never really recovered and died a year later trying to prove to herself that she could still do her job, still thinking I blamed her for what happened to my sister." She took a shuddering breath. "But I couldn't. Even a slayer with her experience gets beaten eventually. I don't think she ever got over it. I know I haven't."

Willow hoped her surprise at this information didn't show. This was the first time Buffy had told her anything about her past. If she wasn't careful and reacted the wrong way she didn't think Buffy would open up to her any further. "And you miss both of them. Not just your sister." She observed in a soft voice.

"Yes. I didn't always get along very well with either of them but I loved them both. My sister had such a gentleness about her. She was curious about everything. She had a talent for discovering things. Give her a musty old book and she was happy. But the last time I saw her she just sat there, staring at nothing, like she wasn't there anymore. She thought I was over protective when I objected to her joining the family business. Hunting demons isn't the safest profession, even for the researchers like her."

"And my friend... she was a wild spirit. Almost a force of nature. She drove everyone crazy but she left a very large hole in our world when she left it."

Trying not to feel jealous about Buffy's obvious feelings for this friend, Willow took Buffy's free hand in her own and squeezed it gently. "What was the problem tonight?" she prompted.

"When I see Dawn I think of the two of them. I promised myself I wouldn't let something like that happen again. That I wouldn't leave someone unprotected if I could help it."

"Buffy, she's a slayer. You can't keep her away from danger." Willow protested.

"I know." Buffy said. "But she isn't indestructible. Even slayers can get hurt or die."

They sat there for a few more minutes before Buffy began telling Willow what she'd seen earlier and what she thought had happened to Dawn.

Dawn woke up to the chirp of her cell phone. Trying unsuccessfully to remember how she'd gotten home after patrolling, she lay there ignoring the sound. Several minutes after it stopped she stiffly got out of bed and stumbled across the hall into the bathroom in search of something to deaden the pain in her head.

After swallowing enough pain killers to knock out a normal person, Dawn stumbled back to her bedroom, collapsing on her bed. She noticed through the painful throbbing in her head that it was almost noon before falling back to sleep.

The smell of her favorite soup woke her not much later. Pushing herself upright, Dawn leaned back against the headboard and looked in the direction of the smell. On a small table next to her bed sat a tray and in the middle of the tray sat a bowl of soup. From the smell it couldn't be anything other than her sister's favorite cure-all. She made it any time Dawn was under the weather. Just the smell was normally enough to make her feel better.

"Go ahead and eat." a voice said. Dawn turned her head to see her sister leaning against her bedroom door, anxiously observing her.

Sitting up and putting her feet on the floor, Dawn silently reached for the soup spoon sitting next to the bowl. Dipping it into the soup she raised a spoonful to her mouth, pausing briefly to inhale the wonderful aroma. Once she'd savored the first mouthful of rich, creamy soup, she quickly devoured the rest.

Putting down her spoon with a contented sigh, Dawn jumped when she heard her sister's amused laugh. She'd completely forgotten she was there.

"If only you ate the rest of the food I cook like that..." Beth commented, shaking her head.

Dawn winked at her sister. "If everything else you cooked tasted that good..." Beth just shook her head and smiled but didn't answer.

"What happened?" Dawn asked. "I don't remember going to bed last night."

Her sister instantly sobered. "I don't know. Willow said she would explain everything at dinner tonight. I know it has something to do with whatever you are doing for the coven."

"What I'm doing?" Dawn looked at her in surprise.

"Dawn..." Beth shook her head. "I might have missed how deeply you've become involved with the coven, but I do know what the coven does."

"You do?" Dawn mumbled, look at the floor.

"Yes." her sister answered.

"How?" Dawn looked back up at her nervously.

"I'll explain after dinner. It can wait for now, Willow wanted you to take it easy today." Beth walked over to her bed to retrieve the tray and empty bowl. "I believe you had plans for the afternoon?"

"Yes. I was meeting some friends at the beach."

"It's a nice day out. Why don't you give them a call?" Beth suggested. "Just make sure you're back in time for dinner."

Dawn knew her sister wasn't what people called a gourmet cook but in the time since their mother's death she'd put in a lot of effort to learn to cook Dawn's favorite foods. A Sunday dinner with her sister, while not something to write songs about, was a treat she wouldn't dare miss.

The wonderful smells that greeted her as she entered the kitchen didn't completely calm her nervousness at the upcoming after dinner meeting but it helped.

"Why don't you set the table?" Beth asked her before she had a chance to peek into any of the pots on the stove.

"How many places?" Dawn cautiously asked. Willow had been out when she'd swung by the Coven House on her way to the beach. She hadn't had a chance to find out anything other than what her sister had told her about the upcoming meeting. For all she knew half the coven was going to show up for dinner.

"Just the three of us." Beth told her, raising an eyebrow at the question. "Where you expecting anyone else?"

"No... maybe..." Dawn mumbled. "Maybe she's bringing a date?"

"A date to a family meeting?" Beth gave her an astonished look. "Is she seeing someone I don't know about?"

"Not that I know about... not yet anyway." Dawn grinned, glad for the distraction. "But I'm working on it."

"Do I know this 'not yet' person?" Beth asked curiously.

"Who says there's an actual person?" Dawn asked innocently, grabbing plates from the cupboard and walking into the dining room.

"Dawn!" Beth said loudly from the kitchen.

"Okay! Okay!" Dawn said, going back into the kitchen for the silverware. "There isn't really someone officially, but she's been spending a lot of time with this person who works down at the bookstore on Main Street." Dawn looked intently at her sister. "Is it okay with you? I think they would be cute together but if you want to get back together with Ms. Rosenberg I'll stop trying to get them together."

"You know we're just good friends." Beth told her with a frown, giving the pot she was standing over a quick stir. "I don't think you should interfere in her personal life."

"That's what they said!" Dawn told her with a grin before returning to the dining room.

"Maybe you should listen to them?" her sister told her sternly from the other room. "Willow can take care of herself."

"Oh... okay." Disappointed at the lack of a real reaction from her sister, Dawn decided to bring up another subject while she was safely in the dining room. "What did you want to talk about after dinner?"

"Your involvement with the coven, for a start." Dawn could hear the concern in her sister's voice even from the other room. "And I would like to know what happened last night."

"Well... you see..." Dawn didn't really know how to start the conversation she'd been dreading for months.

"Dawn, why don't we wait until after dinner for this? I just want to enjoy a nice meal with my sister and my best friend. Then you and Willow will have plenty of time to explain what is going on. Okay?"

"Okay." Dawn sighed in relief before she finished setting the table.

Willow pushed her chair back from the table with a sigh. Dinner had been a bit strained between the three of them, though not unbearably so. They had talked civilly, none of them willing to bring up the real reason she was there just yet.

"Dawn, why don't you clear off the table while I make us coffee?" Beth asked her sister before turning to Willow. "Why don't you go ahead into the living room? We'll both join you in a minute."

"Let me help." Willow protested, standing up and making a slight movement towards the kitchen. She was amazed that her slayer was uncharacteristically following her sister's orders without protesting.

"No. No need for that." Beth told her, placing her hands on Willow's shoulders and turning her, gave her a push in the direction of the living room. "We have it."

"Okay." a disappointed Willow responded. She was in no hurry to begin the expected discussion of Dawn's coven activities. She'd been playing it over and over in her head all day and couldn't think of any way it could go well. Going into the living room she picked the least confrontational spot to sit in that she could find, at the far end of the couch. Several minutes later, giving her a sympathetic look, Dawn sat down next to her, curling her feet up under her.

Walking into the room right after her sister, Beth placed the tray she'd been carrying between them on the coffee table. Before taking her own seat, in what Willow had jokingly referred to in the past as the matriarch's throne, she quietly offered coffee to both of them. Willow could feel the tension in the room increase as Beth sat there sipping her coffee, waiting for one of them to say something.

When it was clear that neither one was willing to begin she shook her head. "Neither of you like to do things the easy way, do you." Before Willow could answer her, Beth continued. "Willow, I believe you owe me an apology."

"Huh?" Dawn looked startled and stole a glance at her now cringing Guide. "Apology for what?" she asked her sister.

"She promised me that the things you would be doing for the coven wouldn't put you in any danger." She told her sister. "I thought she was teaching you to be a Guide like her." She gave Willow a stern glance.

"A Guide?" Dawn squeaked. "You really know what the Coven does?"

"Yes, I have a very good idea what the Coven does. In one way or another this family has supported the Slayer's covens for a long time." Beth sighed and leaned back in her seat. "If Willow hadn't involved you already you would have found out when you were eighteen like I did." She sighed again. "It has been such a long time since we'd had a Guide in the family, and we've had more than our share of slayers in the family that it never occurred to me that you might be one of the chosen. Or that the things she had you doing aren't things Guides normally do."

"Chosen?" Willow sat up suddenly. "What do you mean by that?"

Beth looked at her in confusion. "Isn't that how the coven refers to slayers now? That's how they are referred to in the personal journals of the last Summers to be a Guide."

"No... that's the first time I've heard that." Willow shook her head as the feeling that this was somehow important quickly went through her mind. "Can I see these journals?" she asked excitedly.

"Willow! Let's not forget why we're here!" Beth reminded her with a glare.

"Okay." Willow mumbled. "It can wait."

"Well?" Beth gave her a look Willow remembered well. The 'you were wrong, just admit it so we can move on' look she'd gotten so many times that year when they'd briefly been a couple.

"I'm sorry for not telling you your sister might become a slayer." Willow grumbled ungraciously.

"And?" Beth prodded.

"And for letting her get hurt." Willow added.

"Guys! Slayer here. I can take care of myself!" Dawn whined, causing Willow to cringe.

"Could have fooled me last night." Beth told her, raising her voice.

"I don't remember anything bad happening last night!" Dawn protested, her voice also getting louder. "What happened last night that has you so freaked? I'll admit that getting up this morning wasn't of the fun but I'm perfectly fine now."

Afraid things could get out of hand quickly, Willow attempted to calm them down. "Beth? Dawn? It's okay." She said in the calming tone she'd learned to use in such situations. "We're all here now and everyone is okay." She managed to hide her own sigh of relief as she watched the two sisters visibly take control of their emotions and calm down.

"According to Buffy you were knocked unconscious by something like lightening." Willow told her.

"She was there? Damned slayer stalker." Dawn grumbled. "I bet it was her fault."

"Dawn!" Her sister spouted in protest. "Watch your language."

"Sorry." Dawn glared at Willow. "Sometimes she can be so annoying. Following me around. Killing my vampires!"

"Is that the woman who brought you home last night?" Beth asked her.

"You met her?" Noticing the quick change in Dawn's attitude Willow groaned silently. "What did you think?" Dawn asked excitedly. "Wouldn't she and Willow look cute together?"

"Dawn!" Willow objected. "What did I tell you?"

"I'm right." Dawn pouted, winking at her. "Just because you're too chicken to say anything to her and she's in denial doesn't mean I can't say anything to anyone else."

"I didn't really notice. She seemed in a big hurry to leave." Beth looked back at Willow. "What does she have to do with Dawn being a slayer?"

"She's kind of cool for a grownup." Dawn interjected. "When she isn't stalking me or killing my vampires anyway." Dawn told her. "She knows all these great moves!"

"She just showed up one day. She claims to come from a family of demon hunters." Willow told Beth, hoping she wouldn't ask for details she couldn't provide. "She has a sister Dawn's age and seems a bit protective of her."

"She does?" Dawn asked in surprise. "When did she tell you that?"

"Last night when she was telling me what happened to you." Willow told her in a neutral voice. She didn't feel that Dawn or Beth needed to know about Buffy's extreme reaction to Dawn getting injured.

"Does this mean you're going to let me spar with her?" Dawn asked excitedly, apparently forgetting completely about the discussion she and Willow were supposed to be having with her sister.

"I still haven't decided." Willow told her. "I need to know more about her."

"I'll be dead before you let me." Dawn complained. "I think you just don't want to share her! I knew you were jealous yesterday when you saw all those guys around her at the park."

"Was not!" Willow protested, blushing when Beth raised an eyebrow at her behavior.

"Were too!" Dawn turned to her sister. "You should have seen them. Something was definitely going on between them."

"Jealous?" Beth asked Dawn with a curious note in her voice.

"Yup! Very." Dawn smirked, patting her annoyed Guide on the knee.

Beth sighed, as she watched her sister and Willow. It was clear to her that they weren't going to get back to the discussion about Dawn being a slayer any time soon. She was going to have to tackle them both separately. She didn't like being kept in the dark about her sister's life. It would have to stop. At least they were on the same page now. She sighed again. And then there was this mysterious Buffy person. She knew Willow was an adult and should be able to take care of herself, but she knew she would need to check her out for herself if she was going to be involved with her best friend and her sister.

xii. Season Opener

It was a very faint pressure. Like something pressing at the back of her throat or that tickle of an almost sneeze. It drew her out into the street early on Sunday evening, almost an hour before sunset. It felt nothing like the charged atmosphere from previous night, when she'd followed Dawn on patrol. This was somehow very familiar, in an old way. She stood on the sidewalk below her living room window for several minutes while she tried to figure out where the feeling was coming from. There was a definite direction to it, leading away from downtown towards the outskirts of Sunnydale.

Rushing back up to her apartment, Buffy changed out of the sweats she'd been lounging in, pulling out of her small closet more durable clothes, better suited for what she had planned. She grabbed several slim stakes, her knife, a small penlight, and several small bottles of holy water. Pulling on her leather jacket and stashing things in assorted pockets, Buffy walked back out of her apartment and down to the sidewalk below.

Standing there, ignoring the curious looks of her neighbors, she once more tried to locate that thing that was disturbing enough to cause her to arm herself. It took several minutes of concentration for her innate slayer senses to again single out the thread of the something from among the currents of energy generated by Sunnydale's normal inhabitants.

She subconsciously wet her lips, as if trying to catch a taste. It was on the tip of her tongue, an almost familiar tang to it that triggered one of those fleeting, almost memories that seemed slightly unreal, verging on a sense of deja-vu. She breathed deeply, almost trancelike, as she stood there. A slow breath, in and out in the cooling air.

This allowed the part of her subconscious that was in tune with the mystical world, the non-physical part of herself she most heavily associated with being the slayer, to guide her and point her in the correct direction. Buffy could feel other things, other creatures, out at the edge of her awareness as she did so. Things new to Sunnydale. But investigating them would have to wait until later. Tracking down this thing, whatever it was, felt more important.

She walked quickly and surely down the almost deserted sidewalk. Her stride was deceptive for someone her size as she quickly traveled towards the edge of town. As her unease increased she assumed that she was getting closer to whatever it was. The street she was now on, Heisenberg Street, didn't look familiar, which struck her as odd. She'd thought she'd covered the entire town at some point during the last month while shadowing Dawn on her nightly patrols. She wondered how they'd missed it.

Looking around she couldn't see any landmarks that would indicate where it was in relation to the Sunnydale she'd spent such an important part of her life in. She'd gotten used to the major differences between the two Sunnydales but she was occasionally thrown off, especially at night, by the small things - how an alley might be longer or the street lights brighter or an abandoned building she could remember fighting some demon or vampire in not being abandoned or even there at all.

For some inexplicable reason, she hadn't gotten around to mapping out the locations of places in her lost Sunnydale in relation to this one yet. There'd seemed to be no point to the exercise. She had a general idea where everything was without going to that much trouble. And now, as she strode up the unfamiliar street, she was beginning to regret it.

Suddenly losing contact with whatever caused the feeling she'd been using to track this thing, Buffy stopped and found herself standing in front of an old stone building. Very unhouse-like, the three story edifice looked out of place on the residential street. She couldn't quite tell what its purpose was but now that the pressure that had guided her to this spot was gone she felt something else. Something in the building was attempting to pull her towards it. She resisted its attraction and stood there, trying to figure it out. It wasn't blatantly evil but it wasn't necessarily something she wanted to jump right into.

As she involuntarily took a step forward, a blast of icy cold air caused her to shiver. Unlike the earlier force she had felt across town and the feeling now pulling her towards the building, this was definitely caused by something distinctly evil. It seemed to be pushing her back from the building, away from whatever was attempting to pull her in.

Taking a deep breath, Buffy concentrated for a moment in an attempt to ground herself firmly in the physical world and shield herself from the malevolent presence she could now feel. She reached deep within herself while simultaneously reaching out, using a part of herself she normally kept hidden.

She'd never really attempted to develop her ability to sense the dark aura given off by evil beings. There were so many abilities that made up what she'd taken to calling her slayer senses that she'd only developed those she really needed. On an active Hellmouth sensing evil hadn't required much work so she'd rarely needed to use this particular slayer ability. She'd actually had to bury it as deeply as possible to avoid being driven mad, almost like the one time she'd accidentally become telepathic. She wasn't sure if even Giles was aware of how sensitive she'd become to evil, though she was certain there was probably something somewhere in a musty old Council book that described the ability.

Buffy shivered. The presence radiating from the building, trying to keep her away, was almost too much for her untrained senses to withstand. But now that she'd had a chance to stop and think instead of relying on instinct, she thought she knew what she was dealing with. The dormant Hellmouth that she'd been lax in finding was beginning to wake up. And it was somewhere nearby.

She knew she didn't have any chance of closing it on her own but she could at least make sure no-one was actively trying to open it. An awakening Hellmouth was certainly bad enough, especially if its evil was spilling out into an unsuspecting town unchecked, but an open one, allowing demons into the world, would be cataclysmic.

She hesitated only briefly, fighting whatever was pressuring her to run away and cautiously drawing on the other presence that seemed to want her there, before walking up to the front entrance. She pulled and twisted the doorknob, quickly reaching the conclusion that the door was locked. While she could always resort to her old standby, brute force, she preferred to find another way in that wouldn't alert the neighborhood or any possible building residents to her presence.

Stepping off of the porch into the surrounding high grass, Buffy had the feeling that the building had been abandoned a long time ago. But from the solid looking door and the intact windows she could see from her position, she assumed it was not as neglected as it initially looked and that someone or something took care of it. Staring up at it, she noticed that the building was larger than she'd originally assumed.

Twisting around nervously, Buffy could feel something watching her from a nearby stand of trees. Exploring the grounds and finding out what it was would have to wait for another day, she thought. Now that she was aware of it she could return in the morning if necessary. But right now, the inside of the building was more important. She didn't have much time to get in and take a quick look around before the sun went down.

Gingerly walking through the high grass and around to the back of the building, Buffy tried the rear entrance. The locked door at the top of a flight of cement stairs looked impervious even to her enhanced slayer strength. Not ready to give up, Buffy had just started walking back down the steps in search of another way in when she heard a sharp metallic click. Cautiously turning around, she saw the heavy door slowly start to open. She quickly stepped to the side, off of the steps and out of sight of the opening door. If something was going to come out she didn't want to get in its way.

Several tense minutes later, when it looked like nothing further was going to happen, Buffy walked back up the steps to the door. She cautiously looked around the door before pushing it open wider and entering the building. The subtle background noises of nature and the town that she'd barely noticed seemed to disappear completely. She felt like she was walking into a soundproofed room and her footsteps echoed as if she'd stepped into a large empty space. Hoping this wasn't going to turn into a big mistake she warily closed the door behind her.

Straining her hearing, she couldn't detect any signs of anything moving in the building. Examining the door from the inside, Buffy couldn't find any reason for it to have opened on its own. It looked like an ordinary wooden door. But now that the door was open she couldn't think of a good reason not to take advantage of the opportunity and look for the source of the earlier evil presence.

Looking around in the dim light, Buffy found a stairway to her right, behind a door near the entrance she'd come in. The hallway she was standing in seemed to extend the length of the building. Skipping the stairway for now, she quickly searched the ground floor, noticing several empty rooms along the hallway. Nothing in the bare rooms gave her any clues about their intended purpose.

With the exception of several large windows in each room, none of them seemed to have light switches or any other form of light. As good as her night vision was, even with the penlight she'd grabbed before leaving her apartment, once the sun went down there wouldn't be enough light to see by and she had no plans to stay in the building at that point if she could help it. Wandering around an unknown building in the dark wasn't one of her favorite activities.

Reaching the front of the building, she noticed a large curved stairway to the right of the hallway that led upward. After giving the ground floor one last glance, she climbed the stairs all the way to the top landing. She found herself in another hallway, also lined with doors, two on either side. Checking each door she found that, with the exception of the door leading to the back stairs, they all opened on empty rooms with tall skinny windows. And only one of them seemed to give any indication of having a purpose. The large blackboard on one wall of that room reminded her of a classroom.

Going downward using the smaller back stairs, Buffy noticed that the floor appeared to be identical to the floor above it, down to the location of the room with a blackboard. And like the rest of the parts of the building she'd explored so far, there was no furniture. The rooms seemed to be waiting for something. For some unknown purpose to fill them with life.

Puzzled by what she'd seen so far, Buffy once more took the back stairs down a flight, ending up on the ground floor. Even after a second look around she still no idea about the building's purpose. With the light outside quickly fading, she decided to check out the basement while she had a chance.

Reaching the basement landing, she was surprised when she saw that the stairs continued downward past it. Deciding to leave exploring any lower basement levels for later, Buffy opened the basement landing door and walked through it. The almost empty room was lit by a faint light coming from a number of small windows just above eye level. In the center of the room was a large contraption she assumed was the furnace. She didn't know much about such things but the basement seemed too clean to have been used recently. An empty shelf covered the entire wall opposite the entrance. There also seemed to be some kind of small door or entrance on the back wall, but she couldn't remember seeing anything like it when she was outside.

Having gotten her fill of empty basement Buffy decided to follow the stairs the rest of the way down. Arriving at the bottom, the penlight she'd hurriedly fished out of a pocket, combined with her enhanced vision, gave her just enough light to see with. The door at the bottom was a lot heavier than any other she'd seen so far in the building, even the ones at the two entrances. This was a door that clearly said 'beware.' Surprised that it was unlocked, she pushed it open with slayer bravado.

Entering the room she noticed that it seemed much smaller than the basement above it. Something in the room reeked of darkness. Along one wall were three small locked and chained doors. The rest of the area was empty but something drew her to one corner. It seemed to be empty but her senses were screaming at her. As she got closer to it something started pushing her back. Whatever was there was protected by some force she couldn't get past. And since she hadn't found anything resembling an entrance to the Hellmouth yet, even though she was sure it was close by, she had a strong suspicion that it was there.

But it was getting late and would be dark in a few minutes. Buffy decided that this room and its secrets would have to wait until she'd researched the building. She looked around, trying to imprint an image of the room on her mind. If she needed magic to get past whatever was in the corner she knew where to find a hopefully willing witch. Retracing her steps Buffy went back up to the ground floor.

Standing just inside the back entrance, she took one last look around. The only thing disturbing the thick, dusty film covering the floor were her own footprints, charting her exploration of the building. Closing the door behind her, Buffy headed across town towards the Coven House. She needed to ask Willow a few questions.

Buffy arrived at the Coven House just after sunset. Unfortunately, Willow wasn't home. Except for a dim light on the porch and one above the garage, the yard and house were dark and lifeless. She'd spent enough time sitting on the porch with Willow in the past few weeks that she had no qualms about making herself comfortable while she waited. She consciously picked a place where she could see anyone approaching the house from the street but they couldn't see her.

Even though she knew that Willow and Dawn had both been training to deal with mystical evil, Buffy wasn't sure they were ready yet to deal with something as dangerous as a Hellmouth. And even she wasn't foolish enough to think she could handle it by herself. She would certainly need their help at some point but since they'd had little experience with that level of demonic influence and evil she hoped to keep them out of it as long as possible. Finding out everything she could about the building on Heisenberg Street seemed like a good way to start involving Willow without putting her in any danger. Dawn's involvement would follow quickly after.

While she waited in the dim light, Buffy ticked off in her mind the things she'd learned while in Sunnydale that seemed to be related:

• One - the Hellmouth was becoming active for the first time in almost a century.
• Two - Something had kept her from even thinking about it until now. But she wasn't sure if it was the same force protecting the Hellmouth.
• Three - The mysterious building on Heisenberg Street was connected in some way to the Hellmouth.
• Four - Madeline had, more than once, indicated that she knew something was going on. And then there were the books she'd given her.
• Five - Something magical had attacked Dawn the night before.
• Six - Vampires seemed very interested in Dawn's activities but were showing unnatural restraint. Other than her first night in Sunnydale, they hadn't tried to attack Dawn.
• Seven - The green demon in LA seemed to know something was up.

She wasn't sure how long she could keep Willow from becoming directly involved. But asking for her help with the mysterious building should be safe. More than that and the curious witch could get hurt. She didn't pause to think why she was so interested in shielding Willow from the danger. She was effectively Dawn's Watcher, even if she called herself something else, and that wasn't the safest occupation for anyone.

That was as far as she'd gotten when she saw Willow's car pull into the driveway and disappear into the garage. Several minutes later, preceded by that warm internal glow Buffy had noticed she would occasionally get in her presence, Willow appeared at the foot of the steps looking up at her curiously.

"I need to talk with you about something." Buffy said brusquely to the tired looking woman.

"Okay." Willow gave her a nervous look. "Why don't we take this inside?" she suggested. "We can go up to my apartment. It's been a really long day and I need some place more comfortable than here to relax."

"Sure, that's fine." Buffy stood up and followed her around the porch to the back entrance and up several flights of stairs to her apartment. Willow unlocked the door and tiredly waved Buffy in. Buffy looked around curiously before removing her coat.

"I'll take that." Willow told her when she saw Buffy standing in the entryway with her coat in her hands. Buffy watched her put it in a closet near the door before turning back to examining what she could see of the apartment. Small and plain, it wasn't quite what she'd expected when she'd actually thought about where Willow lived.

"You haven't been here before, have you?" Willow mused. "There's not much to it but let me give you a really quick tour." She walked into the center of the apartment. "Over there is the bedroom and bath." She pointed down a short hallway. "We're almost in the kitchen. My office is over there. And you can see my living room from here." She pointed to several parts of the apartment as she talked. "It would be cozy for two people. With just me it seems a bit large at times. Of course, add the occasional slayer visit to the mix and it starts to feel cramped. Fortunately there's plenty of room downstairs for meetings if we need the space."

"It doesn't seem too bad." Buffy told her with a small smile. "It is certainly larger than my loft."

"Why don't you have a seat on the couch?" Willow suggested. "I'll get us something to drink. Coffee, tea, or...?" she trailed off, turning faintly red.

Buffy wondered what had caused Willow to blush at her own comment. "Tea is fine."

"Great! I've got the real thing." Willow went into the kitchen, leaving Buffy in the living room. Looking around she spotted the couch Willow had mentioned and made herself comfortable on one end.

"Go ahead and take your shoes off," Willow ordered with a smile as she brought a tray with a teapot and two cups into the room. Setting it on the coffee table in front of the couch, she kicked off her own shoes before sitting at the other end of the couch herself. "We're friends. It's allowed."

Following her example Buffy gave Willow another quick smile and curled her now shoeless feet underneath herself on the couch. Taking a sip of the tea Willow had just handed her, Buffy sighed in appreciation. "It's been a long time since I've had tea made that way." she told Willow. "Reminds me of home."

"Really?" Willow gave her another small smile. "I spent a year at Oxford and my advisor insisted that this was the only way to make it. Most people around here don't seem to notice the difference."

"Oh? What did you study there?" Buffy asked her. She'd wondered if Willow had pursued any of the opportunities her own Willow had turned down to stay and help her with her destiny. "An old family friend went there but the closest I've ever gotten was a summer hunting vampires nearby."

"Ancient languages." Willow shrugged. "A lot of the older slayer lore is contained in old manuscripts that are in several obscure dialects of Sumerian and Greek. My advisor was one of the few experts in those dialects. He occasionally does work for us. The Elders recommended that I study with him when I joined the coven."

"So, if I have a book or two in some obscure language you might be able to help me translate it?" Buffy asked half seriously.

"Sure. If I know it. Do you have it with you?" Willow asked with a slight frown. "Is that why you're here?"

Wondering why Willow seemed disappointed, Buffy shook her head. "No, it was just a thought. But I do have a mystery that I thought you might be able to help me with."

"What?" Buffy noticed a faint sheen of excitement in Willow's eyes, like a small child given a surprise gift. She smiled at Willow's enthusiasm, causing her to blush faintly from the attention.

"What's the mystery" Willow asked, recovering quickly.

"Well, it is actually several things." Buffy replied.

"Just a minute." Willow got up from the couch and left the room. Returning, she sat back down on the couch, a pad of paper and a pen in hand. "Okay. Go ahead." Taking a sip of tea she motioned for Buffy to continue.

Buffy grinned slightly at the picture Willow made sitting there, trying to keep her excitement under control and look serious at the same time. It was so much like the reaction her Willow would have had that she had to consciously suppress the nostalgic feelings the sight gave her.

"Well, you know I've been following Dawn almost every night for the past few weeks. I think we've covered most of Sunnydale in the process." Willow nodded. "Well, tonight I felt something strange, some sort of unusual vibe in the air. Not quite evil but really close. So I thought I would follow it and check it out."

"You can sense if something is evil?" Willow looked at her, surprise evident on her face.

"Yes. It's a useful ability in my profession." Willow nodded in agreement. "I usually have to be within several feet of something to feel anything." Buffy said, shrugging. "But whatever it was tonight I could feel it from a good distance, so I followed it. Sort of like you would follow a smell with your nose."

"Oh." Willow wrote something down after Buffy's explanation.

"Anyway, I ended up on some street I don't recall seeing before. It wasn't one I recognized from observing Dawn's patrols." Buffy paused to take a sip of tea. "I was wondering if she intentionally skips it."

"What's the name of the street?" Willow asked.

"It's Heisenberg Street."

"I've lived here all my life and that name doesn't sound familiar." Willow got back up and left the room again, returning with a map of Sunnydale that she laid out on the coffee table, Buffy just moving fast enough to prevent the tea pot from ending up on the floor. Willow gave her a sheepish look before looking at the map.

"Hmmm..." she murmured, Buffy gazing at her expectantly. Looking up she said "I recognize the streets on either side but not that one."

"That's strange." Buffy muttered. "Sunnydale isn't that big of a town."

"No, it isn't." Willow frowned. "That certainly is a mystery. As far as I know we don't have any streets she doesn't patrol. She's not patrolling tonight but I can ask her about it tomorrow. What else did you have questions about?"

"Well, I was wondering about one of the buildings on that street." Buffy shifted back on the couch and rubbed her forehead. "But if you've never heard of the street I'm assuming you don't know anything about what is on it."

"No." Willow thought for a minute. "But we do have extensive historical archives about Sunnydale in the Coven library. If you don't mind waiting until tomorrow I can show you where they are before I head to school." Willow yawned. "Was there anything else?" she asked sleepily.

Buffy grinned at her. "Just something simple and then I'll get you into bed." Willow blushed again and Buffy wondered what had caused that reaction before realizing what she'd said and blushed herself. "By yourself." she corrected, embarrassed.

"I wouldn't mind." Buffy heard Willow say under her breath. At Buffy's raised eyebrow, Willow blushed even darker. Otherwise acting as if Buffy hadn't heard her she asked "What was your last question?"

"I've been here a month and I haven't found the Hellmouth yet." Buffy decided to not mentioned that she'd actually been in no hurry to find it. "Where is it?"

Willow abruptly sat up at the question, suddenly all business. "Why do you want to know? It isn't active."

"I think it's connected to that street somehow." Buffy told her. "I also think it isn't quite as inactive as you think."

"Dawn and I can show you if you really want to see it." Willow admitted. "But can it wait until next weekend? It's in a cavern deep underneath Sunnydale and getting there can take a whole morning."

"I'm not sure if it can wait that long. I think it is starting to become active. Waking up." Buffy told her. "I think that is part of what I sensed tonight but I want to double check."

"Waking up?" Willow paled.

"Yes. I don't think it is dangerous yet." Buffy reassured her. "But if it is becoming active it'll start attracting all sorts of evil creatures to Sunnydale, unless something is done about it."

Willow visibly shivered. "That isn't good!"

"No it isn't" Buffy told her glumly. She put down her cup and reached for her shoes. "I should get going so you can get to bed."

"Why?" Willow pouted, something Buffy hadn't seen her do before.

"Because you aren't the only one who needs to get some sleep." Buffy looked away from Willow before she could give in to her unspoken request that she stay. "If Dawn isn't going out later I should head home."

"Okay." Willow yawned again and leaned back. "Can you show yourself out?"

"Sure." She told her. Rising from the couch, Buffy headed to the closet to get her coat. Noticing a small blanket on the shelf above it, she grabbed it and walked back into the living room. Giving Willow a quick smile, she tucked her in and with a quiet 'Goodnight' left the surprised woman staring at her as she let herself out.

Standing in front of the Coven House for a minute, Buffy looked wistfully up at the light she could see coming from a window in Willow's apartment. Sighing, she turned and headed across town towards her lonely loft.

xiii. The Apocalypse Blues /The Game's Afoot

He waited out of sight, hidden in the trees, watching to see if the girl returned. He'd been waiting a long time, visiting on and off for almost a century for something like this, for someone to enter the house. The prophecy he'd discovered in the catacombs in Paris had drawn him back to Sunnydale half a year ago. Its words had seduced him into believing that his long wait would soon be over. But the town had been as quiet and peaceful as always when he first arrived.

He'd known something was beginning to happen almost a month ago. Feeling something in the air, he'd finally decided it was time to speak with the slayer who'd appeared since his last visit to Sunnydale. But the minions he'd sent out, led by one of his oldest disciples, hadn't returned. And the minions he'd sent out to follow her on the ensuing nights also seemed to have disappeared without a trace.

He'd trained them as well as he could. His vampire minions should have been able to easily handle a Coven trained slayer. Something more dangerous than his minions or the slayer was living in Sunnydale but it would have to wait. There were other pressing matters to deal with.

The stars, his constant guides over the years, had become silent at the same time, sending him into a panic at first. But he'd caught a faint whisper from them once more the moment he spied the girl.

Impatiently stomping his feet, he paced back and forth under the trees, the offensive odor from the crushed pine needles making his nose itch. This was the first proof he'd had that someone could not only see the house, hidden by the spells he'd placed on it years ago, but was also able to enter it, something he'd been unable to accomplish himself no matter how hard he'd tried over the years.

Tired of waiting, after making sure he didn't have an audience, he strode through the grass towards the house, ignoring his protesting acolytes.

The door refused to open no matter how hard he tugged and pounded on it. Not even hitting it gave him any satisfaction. It refused to show any evidence of his efforts. It was as if it were impervious to change. It had always been like that, ever since it had mysteriously appeared on the plot of land he'd so carefully set aside when planning the town.

She'd had a very restless night. She'd woken later than normal, her only memories of her dreams a vague sense of foreboding. They hadn't had that strange clarity that she'd come to associate with slayer dreams but she wasn't prepared to dismiss the feelings that had remained behind.

She'd driven herself hard that morning, the muscle numbing exhaustion caused by her workout and a long run afterward feeling almost good. Unwilling to explore it further just yet, during her run Buffy had avoided the house on Heisenberg Street. Instead, she'd spent her run reviewing everything she could remember about Hellmouths. Which didn't take her long.

She'd always been the one to react to the current apocalypse. She'd learned through hard experience that planning and managing pre-apocalypse resources were things better done by people like Giles and Willow. They were experts at viewing slayers as chess pieces, to be moved around the board only when necessary, she thought bitterly, quickly stepping into the hot water pouring from the shower.

She tried to steer her mind away from the past as she stood under the steaming water. But some things were harder to forget than others. Her issues hadn't all been petty. Her concerns had just been different. She attempted to focus on her current problems in vain, until she gave up and quickly finished.

Standing in the small locker room at the Coven house, covered only in a large fluffy towel, Buffy stared in confusion at the envelope now taped to the locker she'd been using. It hadn't been there earlier when she'd gotten back from her run. Gingerly removing it, she ripped off one edge and extracted the thin piece of paper it contained. Unfolding it, she read the short note -

"I need to see you. I have the information you asked for. - Willow"

Frowning, Buffy quickly dried her hair. Getting dressed she stuffed the note and envelope into the back pocket of her jeans. Looking at her watch, Buffy hurried into the library. She only had a minute before she had to head to work. Finding a pen and scrap of paper, she wrote out a quick reply. Climbing up to Willow's apartment door, she shoved her reply under the door.

Willow hadn't come by the bookshop or shown up at the bar when she'd gone there after work. Giving her what she thought was more than enough time, Buffy eventually headed home, planning on an early night's sleep for once, until she needed to get up to shadow Dawn on another patrol.

Hours later, unable to sleep, she sat huddled under the covers of her bed, her back wedged as far as it could go into the corner. She could feel something in her chest. It was a sour, wretched feeling. Crying wasn't something she'd done in a long time but she recognized the signs. In the last week Buffy had gotten closer to breaking down than at any other time in the last few years.

Her emotions were on edge and all it would take was one little push. And it wouldn't be pretty she thought, taking deep slow breaths in an attempt to keep some semblance of control. She wasn't quite sure why she was so disappointed that Willow hadn't been at the bar but she knew that had something to do with what she was feeling.

And, although Buffy hadn't planned on getting so attached to this mild mannered version of Sunnydale, somehow the place and the people she'd met had wormed their way through her defenses. She wouldn't go so far as to describe her feelings as heartfelt, she didn't think her heart would ever open up like that to anyone again. What was left of it felt calcified and impenetrable. But somehow, in the past few weeks something had happened, something she had no control over.

She now felt oddly possessive of the small town. It might not be the same place she'd spent so much pain and effort protecting years ago but it was hers now. It, its slayer, the witches in the Coven, and the people, from the guy who brought her pizza to the old man who drove the rattling old street-sweeper -- they were all hers to defend.

Maybe it was just transference, she thought, dredging up a term from a psychology class long ago. Maybe her loneliness was confusing her? Making her feel things she shouldn't about the town and certain people in it? Feelings she couldn't afford to have if she wasn't going to stay around, if she were really leaving after she'd dealt with whatever was coming.

She'd spent the past couple days thinking about it, trying to figure out the source of her feelings and analyze them. But she hadn't gotten very far, except when it came to Dawn and Willow. She thought she might finally be on track to understanding their place in her life.

In Dawn's case, Buffy was almost certain that her feelings towards her own absent sister were an important factor. If she were really honest with herself she knew she would have to admit that mixed in with that was some of that overprotectiveness that some of the younger, more innocent slayers she'd come to know since Sunnydale had brought out in her.

No matter what Giles had claimed the last time she remembered speaking to him, they'd been her girls. Hers to guide, hers to teach. The closest she would ever have to someone to pass her legacy on to. And if she'd been able to shield them from the harsh sudden reality of becoming a slayer the way she and Faith had, she knew with certainty that not even the Council could have stopped them from fulfilling the dreams she'd had for them.

And, of course, there was the nature of the girl herself. Dawn continually reminded her of a small kitten trying to grow into a tough wildcat. She was rough around the edges but her upbeat attitude and energy made her someone Buffy enjoyed being around, though she had no intention of ever telling her that.

But her feelings towards Dawn had been easy to examine. Buffy had spent a lot of time thinking about her growing feelings towards this Willow without coming to any real conclusion. Sure, she had some of the mental and physical traits of the Willow she had grown up with but they weren't the same person. Much of that could be attributed to the different lives they'd had growing up. Her Willow had become a dark person in self defense, her toughness clearly visible to those who really knew her.

This Willow, if she were tough, had managed to keep that part of her personality well hidden from outsiders like herself. Buffy suspected that if she were a bell she would have 'rung true'. This was a woman who seemed emotionally solid to the core. Buffy wasn't sure what her feelings towards this Willow meant for the future but she knew she needed something only this woman could give her.

Unfortunately, she wasn't sure how to get it. Or even what it was. During the evenings they'd spent together at Tony's they'd become friendly towards each other but, even though there was an undeniable attraction of some sort, she couldn't really call their relationship anything like friendship. And they weren't quite colleagues. They were closer to being competitors, even if Willow wasn't aware of that yet. And competitors, in her experience, didn't admit to needing anything from their fellow competitors.

But Buffy wasn't blind to how being in this Willow's presence seemed to brighten her normally gray world, adding a bit of color. Her Willow had affected her in much the same way when they'd first met, the feelings lasting through their early period of close friendship. The only conclusion she could come to was that her long years as a slayer had made her sensitive to the unconscious magical aura both Willows had exhibited and that was what attracted her. In the process it was drawing her in to Willow's orbit like a magnet.

Buffy yawned and pulled her covers tighter, exhausted by such heavy thinking, but sleep continued to elude her. It was too early in the evening to get up and make a swing through town and Dawn wouldn't be out patrolling for several more hours. Rolling onto her back, she lay there mummy-like, staring up at the ceiling, and waited for her mind to admit defeat and allow her to sleep.

The sound of knocking roused her from a light sleep. Groaning, she rolled off of her bed, ending up in a confused heap on the floor. Getting to her feet, Buffy threw the pile of bedclothes back on the bed, in too much of a hurry to do more than spread them out in a not so close approximation of neatness. Scrambling around, she hunted for something to wear, her search punctuated by the slow rhythmic sound of something or someone tapping on her door.

Spying a large t-shirt draped over a chair, she hastily put it on, feeling marginally more presentable as she reached the door. Standing on her toes and peering through the cracked peephole, all Buffy could make out through the splintered glass was a pale face surrounded by red hair. It could only be Willow.

Looking down at herself for a moment, she shrugged. It was better than naked like she'd been earlier. If she'd had a few minutes warning she could have found something more appropriate to wear, but this was Willow, her half asleep mind told her, and Willow had seen her dressed a lot worse or in a lot less over the years. Opening the door, she found herself staring into Willow's wide, surprised eyes. She was standing there, holding several steaming cups in a cardboard tray in one hand, and a brown paper bag in the other. Inhaling the welcome aroma of hot coffee, Buffy automatically stepped aside to allow her to enter.

Willow swallowed nervously, quickly suppressing the small exclamation that threatened to escape at the sight that greeted her. She hadn't really thought about what Buffy would be doing so late in the evening when she'd rushed over. Standing there in just a large t-shirt, her silhouette clearly visible through the thin material in the glaring light pouring out of her apartment, Buffy seemed like an image from a dream. She'd either been sleeping or doing something Willow wasn't willing to contemplate.

"Coffee?" She breathlessly squeaked as she entered the loft. "I have muffins." She held up the objects she was carrying.

Following Buffy into the main part of her loft, Willow looked around for somewhere to put the muffins and coffee. She didn't object when Buffy relieved her of the muffins, following her into the small kitchen and placing the coffee on the counter.

"What did you find out?" Buffy asked, grabbing a plate out of a cupboard and handing it to Willow, quickly pulling the muffins out of the bag and placing them on it, as Willow watched her curiously, all as if it were something they'd done together many times in the past.

"It was a little surprising. I had to go to the Coven house in San Francisco. Ours didn't have anything useful about the part of the town's history." She stopped talking long enough to take a muffin from the plate she was holding. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Assume I don't know anything." Buffy told her, guiding her into the living area and pointing at a low table near her bed where Willow deposited the plate of muffins.

"Well, Sunnydale isn't actually that old. Even for this part of California. It was founded in the 1890's several miles from an old Spanish mission." Willow said, nervously taking a seat next to Buffy on her bed.

"Why here?" Buffy asked, taking one of the coffee cups she'd brought in from the kitchen and handing the other to Willow. "There must have been better places to build a town."

"I couldn't find any reason. I even checked with the state Historical Society." Willow frowned in thought, watching Buffy quickly demolish one of the muffins. "It's not like there was gold or anything like that here. Even the small harbor isn't big enough for real ships. All we ever get are small coastal tramp freighters.

"It looks like someone bought a large plot of land and managed to convince the railroad that this was the perfect spot for a train station. Once the railroad was here the town grew quickly." She took a sip from her own coffee, giving a quick glance around as she did so to see if she'd interrupted anything personal by her surprise visit. Not seeing any signs of anything obvious, she felt a quick stab of relief.

"Was there any record of this person who bought the land?" Buffy asked, reaching for another muffin.

"No. Sorry." Willow said apologetically. "That was lost in the great earthquake of 1906. By that time the town was thriving and the land had been split up into smaller parcels. But I was able to find out who the first mayor was."

"Who?" Buffy asked.

"A Richard Wilkins." Buffy looked puzzled at the name, almost as if she recognized it. It hadn't been familiar at all to Willow. "He disappeared several years later. It was a big mystery." Willow added. "His house was destroyed in an earthquake the same year."

"What about that building?" Buffy mumbled, finishing her muffin.

"Nothing. It doesn't appear on any maps. It's as if it doesn't exist."

"What do you mean?" Buffy said.

"Someone must own it and pay taxes but I couldn't find any record of who." Willow said, frowning. "They must pay in cash. It's like it's invisible."

"Nothing at all?" Buffy asked, her disbelief clear in her voice. "How is that possible?"

"It doesn't take much. There are still a number of documents the town clerk keeps locked away. It could be listed there." Willow suggested, though she doubted it given the other mysteries about the building.

"Okay. What about the land it's on? Someone must own that."

"Well, according to the town clerk's office, someone bought it from the estate of Richard Wilkins after he was declared deceased."

"Who?" Buffy asked, looking at Willow as she licked muffin from her fingers.

"They won't say. And I had to threaten them with a lawyer to find out that much." Willow said, trying not to react to the almost erotic sight. "And that's it. I have inquiries in to the State Archives but that could take weeks, if they have anything the Historical Society and the town clerk didn't."

There wasn't much to talk about after that. Not wanting to intrude on whatever Buffy's plans had been for the rest of the night, and not sure of her own control after seeing what she was almost sure was a completely innocent act, Willow finished her coffee and muffin before getting up to leave.

"Let me walk you home." Buffy said. "Just give me a minute to change into something more appropriate."

"You don't have to do that." Willow protested.

"I was going to go for a walk anyway." Buffy demurred.

Willow watched her curiously as she rummaged in a small wardrobe, eventually producing a small pile of dark material she took into the bathroom.

When Buffy rejoined her, Willow stared at her clothes in interest. This wasn't the first time she'd seen Buffy in what she assumed was her demon hunting outfit but the contrast between what she'd been wearing earlier and now struck her as significant. It seemed as if Buffy had done more than change her clothes. Gone was the almost nymph-like, amusing conversationalist of the last few minutes and facing her now was the tough, mysterious woman she'd accompanied to LA, her violent nature just barely suppressed.

Although she was very much aware of it, Willow didn't subscribe to the whole butch-femme lifestyle. She simply preferred the company of women who wouldn't be mistaken for anything else. But looking at the very butch looking Buffy, a shiver of desire went down her back. She radiated raw power in a way that pulled Willow in, almost making her want to wallow in it.

"Ready." Buffy said, grabbing a jacket from her closet.

"Oh yeah." Willow murmured, unable to suppress a blush at her own comment. "Yes." she said loudly, hoping Buffy hadn't heard her.

"You promised me a tour of the Hellmouth." Buffy said, as they stepped out into the street. "The sooner the better."

"Saturday morning?" Willow asked. "Dawn is going to want to see it also."

"She hasn't seen it yet?" Buffy asked, the surprise evident in her voice.

"No... there hasn't been much point, it being closed." Willow said with a shrug. "It isn't the easiest thing to get to."

"Okay." Buffy said. "I'm assuming she'll know enough to bring weapons that are useful underground. Just in case we run into anything." She added.

Willow nodded. "Yes, we've explored the caverns below Sunnydale before. I thought it would be a good training experience learning to fight underground while we had the chance if the Coven needs her elsewhere in the future."

They'd driven to the edge of Sunnydale at first light, stopping in one of the numerous small public parks that dotted the area. Entering the park on foot, Willow had led them to a sheltered corner. Dropping the bulky bag she'd taken from her car, she waved at them to do the same with the ones she'd given them.

Grabbing a pair of gloves out of her bag, she began clearing away the brush in front of a rock wall. "You're welcome to help." she said, giving them a look several minutes later.

"Yeah, okay." Buffy said, also grabbing a pair of gloves and throwing the remaining pair at Dawn, embarrassed at having been caught staring.

Half an hour later, the area clear, Buffy and Dawn watched Willow as, after saying a few words in what sounded like German, she blew a handful of dust against the rock wall. It seemed to cling in the shape of a small arch. Buffy wasn't able to contain her surprise when the area below the arch disappeared, revealing a small door.

"How did you find this?" Buffy asked, staring at it. It was the first real magic she'd seen Willow do since coming to Sunnydale.

"I did mention the extensive cave system under Sunnydale?" Willow asked absently. Buffy noticed she didn't seem in too much of a hurry to enter.

"You'd mentioned exploring." Buffy said, watching her remove a number of things from all three bags, arranging them into piles.

"Well... this is the entrance to the cave system that gets us closest to the Hellmouth." Willow said.

Squatting down next to her, Buffy looked curiously at the three piles. Each pile contained several long, thin ropes; something that looked like one of those glow-sticks you'd get at a fair; several small objects that reminded her of the radios used by the Initiative; and several small packets of food and bottles of water. It wasn't quite enough for an Arctic expedition but certainly more than she expected.

"I don't think we'll have much use for radios underground." she commented, examining one and wondering where Willow had gotten them.

"I, um, borrowed these from a friend. They don't have much range underground, maybe a kilometer, but they'll help if we get separated." Pulling several other objects out of her bag, she added. "These are signal boosters. They should help. He wouldn't let me have the piece that connects everything into the cell network." she grumbled.

"Okay..." Buffy said, hoping they wouldn't actually need these toys. Mixing magic and electronics together tended to cause problems in her experience.

Dawn snorted in amusement. She'd been fairly quiet after joining Buffy and Willow at the Coven house, not saying anything once they'd started out. Buffy raised an eyebrow at the young slayer, who just shook her head. From her expression, Buffy wondered how many other trips she'd been on with Willow in the past that had turned into similar geek toy fests.

"I wasn't able to borrow the version with the built in cameras." Willow added, missing the byplay between her companions. "But I brought a camera." She held up a small device.

"Camera?" Buffy asked.

"I'm hoping you can get close enough to take pictures."

"Why haven't you done that already?" Buffy said. "You've been to the Hellmouth before."

"She can't get close enough." Dawn told her with a slight smirk. "None of the witches can. It's a thing."

"None of the witches who've tried." Willow corrected primly.

"What about Dawn?" Buffy asked. "Why haven't you had her try it?"

"She doesn't want me going near it." Dawn grumbled. "This is the first time she's let me come along."

"She's not really ready yet." Willow told her. "If you weren't in such a hurry..."

"I've been ready for months." Dawn protested. "Besides, you keep telling me it's closed."

"Okay." Buffy interrupted, before Dawn's complaint could turn into a full blown rant. "So you think someone else can get close to it?"

"I'm hoping." Willow said before handing each of them one of the piles.

"It's why we aren't too worried about the Hellmouth." Willow said. "No one can get past the barrier."

"Who did it?" Buffy asked, watching Willow several feet away, apparently leaning on nothing in the dim light. Carefully reaching out in front of herself, she found a firm barrier blocking her away.

"No idea." Willow admitted sheepishly. "It's been like this as long as we've known the Hellmouth was here."

"Have you asked Madeline?" Buffy asked.

"Why?" Willow asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "What does she have to do with it?"

Buffy shrugged, not willing to air her suspicions just yet. "Not sure. Just a hunch."

Stepping closer to the barrier, she followed Willow's example, slowly putting her full weight on it. Dawn gingerly mimicked their actions.

She looked around the large cavern. "Homey." she murmured, causing Dawn to giggle nervously. "Could use a few decorations, nick-nacks. That sort of thing."

"Decorations?" Willow asked, giving her an odd look.

"Yeah. Skeletons hanging from chains, smoking fires, chanting minions." Buffy winked at Dawn who unsuccessfully tried not to laugh. In the back of her mind was the thought that her sister shouldn't have a slayer's macabre sense of humor.

"It's a cave with a potential opening to Hell in it." Willow said. "Isn't that enough?"

"Nah..." Dawn blurted out between giggles. "Something is definitely missing."

Buffy sobered up at the stern look on Willow's face. Pushing against the barrier again, she wasn't able to suppress her gasp of surprise when it suddenly gave way and she fell forward towards the cavern floor. "Oops?" she said, turning her fall into a roll, ending up back on her feet.

She looked back at Dawn and Willow. "Care to join me ladies?" She asked, watching both of them push fruitlessly against it.

"I can feel it give slightly now," Dawn grumbled, "but it still won't let me through." She seemed to bounce slightly.

"Feels solid to me." Willow added.

Buffy felt the air around her. "From this side it's as if it weren't there." she told them. "Just a slight tingling."

"Not fair." Dawn said, pouting.

Buffy winked at her. "Whomever put it up must like blondes."

"Yeah, right." Dawn huffed before laughing at her. "More likely it only allows old people through."

"Old people?" Willow asked, giving Dawn a look that Buffy felt even from a distance.

"Old, almost, but not quite, blondes?" Dawn corrected herself as she stepped away from Willow with an exaggerated motion.

"Not quite blonde?" Willow asked, in a puzzled tone.

"Let's not go there." Buffy said, wondering if her roots were starting to show. "Why don't you throw me something. Let's see if the barrier is person or object based." Before she'd finished, Dawn had thrown a water bottle through the barrier at Buffy, just barely missing her head as she grabbed it out of the air.

"Hey!" Willow said, scolding her, "What was that for?"

"An experiment?" Dawn mumbled.

Taking a large gulp of water from the bottle, Buffy sighed, suspecting it was her fault for the overly light tone. But she couldn't help it. As much as she hated to admit it, the trip down to the Hellmouth had been fun. Waving the bottle, "It's okay." she told Willow. "I was thirsty anyway."

"Crap." Willow grumbled, plopping down onto a nearby rock. "It's us, isn't it."

Hearing faint growling, Buffy turned and watched as several large demon-like creatures entered at the far end of the cavern and headed in their direction.

"We seem to have company. How far does this barrier extend?" She asked, pointing at the new arrivals.

"All around." Willow said, quickly standing and motioning to Dawn. "They shouldn't be there either."

"Well, they are. And I don't think they're here to invite us to a party." Buffy said, stepping back through the barrier and joining Dawn and Willow at the mouth of the tunnel they'd used to reach the cavern. "Go ahead, I'll follow." Buffy said, urging them into the tunnel.

"I can help fight them." Dawn protested.

"You might have to but not yet." Buffy said, pulling out a long knife. "Go!" She pushed Willow into the tunnel with her free hand.

"Where'd you get that?" Dawn asked, looking at her weapon.

"Less talking, more leaving." Buffy told her, pointing up the tunnel. "We can discuss how to hide weapons in inconspicuous places after we get out of here. Make sure Willow gets out of here safely. I'll be right behind you."

"Okay, okay!" Dawn grumbled, turning and running after Willow.

Buffy stood her ground as the growling demon-creatures approached. Her initial plan of quickly dealing with them came crashing to a halt when she saw several other larger creatures also entering the cavern at the same place.

"Getting a bit crowded down here." Buffy muttered under her breath.

As soon as the first creature passed the barrier, Buffy attacked, not giving it a chance to get in the first blow.

To Be Continued...