Disclaimer: MsQuey intends no copright infringement in the making of this story. It is purely for her readers' enjoyment and she is making no money from it.

A/N: I'd just like to give props to my friend SinisterChic for helping me come up with a title for this fic and for all of her encouragement to continue on with it!

How To Prepare For The Second Coming

by MsQuey

Chapter 1

Buffy hung up the phone, a glazed expression on her face. It was similar to the time when she had come home to find her mother lifeless on the living room couch. The shock of that sight had emptied her of all emotion and she moved around, a ghost of herself. Now she crossed the length of the apartment she shared with Dawn, to the kitchen nook. Her sister was busy making eggs and pancakes for the two of them.

"Buffy, I forgot. Did you want your eggs scrambled or sunny-side up?" Buffy didn't answer. Instead she picked up a dish towel and began twisting it around her arm. Dawn repeated her question after a moment, but when she still didn't answer Dawn turned away from the range, waving the spatula. "Hello, Earth to Buffy? Your eggs are calling." Buffy's eyes flittered up to meet her sister's questioning gaze but then quickly went back to what she was doing with the towel.

"Did you kill Gimli?" she asked suspiciously. "God, I swear. You can save the world but you can't manage to keep my fish from jumping out of the bowl when you dust."

"What?" Buffy seemed to come out of it then. "No. Gimli's fine."

"Then what's wrong?" The very next second a glimmer of understanding spread across her face. The phone. Buffy had just hung up the phone. "Oh, no. Was it Giles? Has something happened?"

Buffy laid the dish towel back onto the counter. "Actually, Dawn . . . It was Faith."

Dawn just stood there, completely nonplused, as if to say, So what?

"I think maybe you should sit down for this." Her voice was so quite that Dawn obeyed without another word, worried about what she was about to hear. Was it another Apocalypse? A new Hellmouth?

Buffy seemed to drag her eyes from the counter all the way to Dawn's tensely waiting face. "There was a battle in L.A. At Wolfram & Hart.—Angel is dead." Tears began to well up in Dawn's eyes that had widened like saucers. "Faith had caught wind of what was happening, but by the time she got there it was already too late." Buffy wiped a stray tear from her cheek, but willed herself not to lose control.

"No! He can't be dead!" Dawn shouted, not having that kind of command over herself.

"He is, Dawnie."

"But how does she know? She wouldn't have been able to find a body if Angel had been dusted! He could have just left after the battle was over!" She got up off the stool and began to pace the short length of the kitchen. "No body doesn't equal dead."

"In this case it does," Buffy replied, her arms folded across her chest. "Now please sit down. I'm not finished yet."

Dawn's hands shot up in defeat and she sank back down onto the bar stool. "Fine. Bring on the bad," she said gloomily.

Now that she had Dawn's attention, however, Buffy was having a hard time getting the words out. She picked up the poor dish towel and resumed twisting it, trying to work out the best way to tell her. She wrapped the towel so tightly around her fist that her knuckles went white. Then she sighed and let it go.

"Spike is alive."

A/N: This chapter is dedicated in fond memory to my own fish, "Gimli", who died because I am an idiot.