Disclaimer: The characters featured here are not mine. The characters of Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, Rupert Giles, Dawn Summers, Andrew Wells, Robin Wood, Faith, Kennedy, and Chao Ahn are all the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and Fox. The character of Cenzi also is not mine, but is the property of Roger Damon Price, Thames/Tetra Television and ITV. All are used here without permission but this is not for profit.

Book I: Autumn Sky in the East

On the beach, at night Stands a child, with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky.
-- "On the Beach at Night" by Walt Whitman

Part I: Leaning Together

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
-- "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

Chapter I - On a Clear Night You Can See Forever

There truly was some truth to the sentiment that one could see forever on a clear night. As she leaned on the old wooden railing, cigarette dangling from her fingers and stared out across the New Mexico desert, Cenzi couldn't help but think that whomever first made that statement must have spent the night in the desert. Tilting her head back just a bit, she could see the sky and stars in all their perfect majesty. She hadn't seen this many stars since her days at Ellicott Girls College, and back then she had been just naïve and inexperienced enough to not appreciate the spectacular view.

It just wasn't possible to see this many stars in the city. Even in a city like Sunnydale, which really wasn't a city so much as it was the very fringe of suburbia desperately beating back the tide of urban sprawl. True, Sunnydale had to its name only one Starbucks and one nightclub, but it also had a mall and quaint little downtown and a small airport. It was suburbia and yet not; it was the middle of nowhere and yet not entirely outside of civilization. Sunnydale was, or rather Sunnydale had been, an enigma. These days Sunnydale was just a big crater in the middle of southern California.

She thought that she would feel less numb about it by now. Certainly, once the celebration had worn off, the whole dancing, singing and getting slightly drunk over the defeat of The First Evil and avoiding Apocalypse thing, she expected for reality to set in. It had for some of the other girls; tears were shed, walls were punched and there had been a great many chasings into the countryside or desert as one girl or another ran off in a fright suddenly terrified of whom she was, what she was and what it meant. That had not happened to Cenzi yet. She kept qualifying that realization with the "yet," even though she was beginning to have her doubts that it would ever happen at all. The epic battle of the century, or at least of the year seeing as how according to Dawn these types of things were pretty much standard for them, was two and a half weeks behind them and still no freakage.

No freakage, but nearly a year in Sunnydale and in the company of Buffy and her friends and years of living in England went right out the window as Cenzi took to thinking and speaking in the dialect of her Californian companions.

Cenzi took a drag of her cigarette, holding the smoke in her mouth and savoring the taste of it. Mrs. Merriwick had never allowed her to smoke. If the woman so much as thought that Cenzi even entertained the thought of filling her lungs with "that putrid death delivering tar," Cenzi would find herself in the midst of a long, grueling workout so intense that it left her with barely enough energy to crawl into bed and aching muscles the next morning. That hadn't always been the case though. At first Mrs. Merriwick threatened to tell the Headmistress and Cenzi's parents until she realized that her young charge didn't care either way what the Watcher said to the Headmistress or Cenzi's all too distracted parental units.

The workouts had been a better punishment anyway, Cenzi reflected as she exhaled. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Merriwick's workouts, Cenzi might not have been one of the survivors. She might have been like Amanda or Xander's odd ex-fiancé, a name spoken in respect and reverence as the rag tag group of survivors held a private memorial service.

There it was, a tiny fluttering something in her stomach. Not much, but enough a quiver that told her maybe there really was something to the whole post-traumatic-stress disorder. It just wasn't her time yet to travel down the freakage road. That quiver was enough for now, enough for her to need another puff on the cigarette for the sake of comfort and soothing familiarity.

"Hey."

Cenzi didn't jump like she would have three weeks ago. Even with all of Mrs. Merriwick's drills and teachings, she had never managed to hone in on her special senses, she'd never been able to focus her awareness to avoid surprise. That all changed in one moment, when one woman cast one spell that radiated in every fiber of Cenzi's being and changed everything.

She didn't look back and she didn't try to extinguish or hide the cigarette.

"Hey," Cenzi greeted in return, "Did they send you out to find me?"

"No," Dawn Summers shook her head slightly and joined Cenzi at the railing. "I just needed to get some air. And find someone to talk to other than Andrew."

"What's it this time? X-Men?"

"Daredevil."

Cenzi felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile, a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia coming over her. "When he goes on like that he kind of reminds me of my brother."

Dawn frowned, "I'm sorry."

Cenzi shrugged. "I'm not."

By unspoken agreement they let the conversation drop at that moment, both turning their attention to stare out across the darkened and cooling desert. Although they were close in age, Cenzi, like the rest of the Potentials, correction Slayers, hadn't really bonded with Dawn. They had bonded with one another, feeling somehow superior to Buffy's sister and friends because they were special and chosen. Defeating the source of evil and preventing world apocalypse made them realize that maybe they needed to give a little more credit where credit was due.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

No apologies had been spoken, but it was understood that they had been wrong. Dawn tolerated them all a bit more and they gave her the respect she both earned and deserved.

"You're one of the last ones," Dawn said at last.

The words didn't surprise Cenzi. She had been expecting them, waiting for them really. Of course, she expected them to come from Buffy or Giles or maybe even Faith, but not Dawn.

"Yeah, I guess Vi is on the next bus out in the morning," Cenzi acknowledged the statement without really acknowledging the unasked and unspoken, 'So when are you leaving to go home?'

"It's going to be weird. I've gotten kind of used to you guys."

"Right," Cenzi smoked and rolled her eyes.

"Really. And being at an old ranch in the middle of nowhere it's been kind of nice knowing instead of one or two Slayers, we've got a whole army watching our backs."

"Right," Cenzi said again, this time turning to look squarely at The Slayer's little sister. And yes, in her mind, Buffy was still The Slayer. And Faith was The Slayer. Cenzi was not The Slayer because she was still waiting for the numbness to wear off. "I'm not going anywhere just yet."

"You have to."

"Why?"

"Because we're going to Cleveland in a few days. Hellmouth remember?" Dawn said the words with an air of superiority, her tone implying that maybe Cenzi had hit her head sometime between fighting Turok-Han vampires and escaping the swallowing of Sunnydale.

"I know. I think that I'm going to come along. Giles said that I could, if I wanted." She added that last as an afterthought, idly wondering why she felt the need to explain herself to Dawn.

That surprised Dawn. "You don't want to go home?"

"Not really." One last drag and Cenzi stared down regretfully at the cigarette. She had half a pack in her jeans pocket, but she didn't dig them out to light another one. Getting this pack had taken some work on her part; Faith had taken some convincing to buy the pack in town, and at first Cenzi had thought the brunette Slayer wouldn't do it.

"You realize this is my ass right?" Faith said to her, as she stood not taking the folded up dollar bills that Cenzi held out to her. "That Giles and B are gonna chew me out if they find out I bought cigarettes for a minor? Not to mention the whole lack of proper of ID thing because you know I'm kind of on the lam?"

The last was only partly true and Cenzi knew it as well as everyone else did. Evidently Faith had a friend in LA who had just taken over a law firm - the details were many, varied and mostly confusing - but the part that wasn't confusing was that this friend was working on erasing that "little" blemish on Faith's record. Or working on erasing her entire record. It all came down to the same thing.

"I won't tell them who purchased them for me," Cenzi promised.

"G and B ain't that stupid, Cenzi," Faith said but she pocketed the money anyway.

That night after most of the entourage bedded down for the night, Faith joined her for a quick smoke before heading back to "check on Robin."

The euphemism was not lost on Cenzi.

"Everybody wants to go home," Dawn's words pulled Cenzi back to the present. "I'd want to go home, you know if my home wasn't all a big pile of dust in the bottom of a crater."

"I don't," Cenzi said simply.

"Why not?" Dawn's eyes widened marginally and her face puckered briefly as though she had licked a lemon as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The change in her features passed quickly though, so quickly that if Cenzi hadn't been looking directly at the other girl, she would have missed it. "I mean, if you want to talk about it or whatever."

Cenzi shrugged and suddenly she recalled all the times that Mrs. Merriwick scolded her for using that as answer to a question.

"You were given a mouth, it would be ever so thoughtful of you to use it when answering my questions. Now, I ask you again . . ."

She really missed Mrs. Merriwick. The woman had been a royal pain in her ass, but she had been closer family than Cenzi's own family was. Mrs. Merriwick had been more than Cenzi's mentor and Watcher; the woman had been her surrogate mother.

"I don't think that my family has even missed me yet, Dawn." Cenzi said after a moment. She thought about ignoring the question, but figured it wouldn't make much difference. Eventually, she would have to talk about it, particularly if she wanted to go on to Cleveland. "Both of my parents travel a lot. And Giles sent a letter of explanation to the Headmistress, who knows what exactly he explained, but if my parents missed me at all my father would have found me by now. He has his sources."

Cenzi wondered how much of that statement was true. Certainly her parents worked more hours than she ever thought possible, but they should have received the letter weeks ago. Of course, there was a good chance that neither of them had been home to receive it, and her brother wouldn't have cared enough about her "flights of fancy" to open an envelope addressed to their parents. If her father had seen the letter, she liked to imagine that he was sick with worry and pooling all his resources to find his daughter; she liked to imagine that maybe just this once she was the center of her parents' worry and energy, and that it was not all focused on her brother.

But then again, in all likelihood her brother might have pulled another one of his amazing, disappearing, or almost getting killed stunts that left their parents suitably distracted.

Because really, if her parents knew she was missing and her father put all his feelers out, shouldn't he have found her by now even in the middle of the New Mexico desert?

"My Dad knows where I am and he isn't exactly beating a path here either," Dawn said. Cenzi knew that it was meant to be comforting and sympathetic, and she appreciated the effort although she felt neither comforted nor understood. After all, Dawn did have Buffy. That had to count for something.

"Yeah." That was all Cenzi said. Thinking about her family, about Mrs. Merriwick, about how Giles ushered her out of England without even a "by your leave" really made her itch for another cigarette.

Silence returned for a spell while Cenzi resisted the urge to light another cigarette.

Then, "Want to go beat Willow and Kennedy at Euchre? I need a partner who can actually play without quoting Justice League."

Cenzi didn't even wait a beat before answering. The stars would be there tomorrow night; she could see if tomorrow night would be the night she hit freakage. "Sure, what else am I going to do?"

Without a look backwards at the encroaching darkness, Millicent Damon the Vampire Slayer followed Dawn back inside.

End of Chapter One