A.N. Okay, this is something I wrote a while ago and thought I'd post just to see what kind of response it gets. I'd actually forgotten about it but after reading it, I might pick it back up again if people like it…so if you like it, please let me know. Thanks for reading, enjoy!

P

Buffy snatched a pillow up from the couch impatiently and fluffed it for the third time in twenty minutes. She looked around the apartment again to be sure there was nothing left to clean and placed the pillow back in its previous resting place once again. She wrung her hands nervously as she paced her living room waiting for word from someone.

Her head snapped up as her phone rang and she reached out to pick it up, listening carefully for a second, and hanging up quickly. She reached her front door in a few short strides and was outside heading for the first floor of the building. Her pace quickened as she exited the building and made her way to the Council medical building across the courtyard and she had broken into a full run by the time she hit the lobby of the state of the art medical building. Her mind raced as her heels clicked along the near empty hallway and as she turned the corner she saw who she'd been waiting two long months to see.

"Faith." The name escaped her lips at nearly a whisper.

The other slayer looked up slowly and Buffy gasped at the sight of her. Her once long, dark hair was short and ragged and had streaks of blonde from over exposure to sun and God knows what else. Her face was badly bruised and a long scar ran from nearly ear to ear where it appeared as though she had her throat slit. Her skin was dark and dirty and her clothes were ragged. Various bandages scattered her arms where it appeared Willow and Kennedy did their best to patch her up as they brought her back.

Buffy watched as a medical team suddenly appeared from another room and within seconds they were shooed from the room so they could tend to the nearly physically and emotionally destroyed slayer.

Willow slid an arm around the blonde slayer's shoulders, which shook Buffy from her state. Buffy forced a smile and pulled away from her friend.

"I'm gonna go check on Dawn," she told them all quietly without a look back.

She heard them all mutter things that were supposed to make her feel better, but it was all pretty pointless. The two people most important to her were in two hospital beds in the medical ward of the Council and there was absolutely nothing she could do to help either of them.

Dawn and Faith had been on a rescue mission in an alternate dimension. A slayer had been captured and someone had to go after her. Dawn, being a higher member of both the Council and the Council Coven, had decided that she and Faith would go since at the time Buffy had been injured and they would need someone to perform the necessary spells to get them into and out of the dimension. Buffy had resisted initially but she finally gave in after speaking with Willow and Giles and before she knew it, her sister and her lover were gone.

The mission was supposed to have taken them three weeks. After the pair had been gone five weeks Buffy and Willow were ready to go in after them. That's when Dawn appeared out of seemingly nowhere. She had been brutally attacked and managed to get herself back to the Council after Faith had sacrificed herself to allow Dawn an escape.

The younger Summers was unconscious for four days and when she finally did wake up she recounted how horrible her days in the other world were once she and Faith were captured by the same demon tribe that had taken their slayer.

It wasn't long before Willow decided she and Kennedy would go in and rescue Faith. Buffy had wanted to be the slayer to go, but after much debate and careful consideration, Kennedy was the slayer to go on the mission. Everyone finally agreed that it would be best if Buffy stay to watch over Dawn and continue to heal herself. She hated it, but she figured it was the only way.

She paused outside her little sister's room and gathered herself before pushing the door open and stepping inside. She smiled sadly when she saw Dawn easing herself into bed. She was obviously still in a lot of pain but it was a lot better than it had been. Buffy felt a wave of guilt crash over her knowing that she should have protected her sister from everything she'd been through.

"Buffy, stop," Dawn ordered quietly from the bed, finally catching sight of her older sister worrying and feeling guilty by the door. Typical Buffy.

The slayer shook herself out of it and moved towards the bed, dropping a gentle kiss to the younger girl's forehead. "I'm your older sister, it's what I do." She took a seat in the chair next to the bed and sighed heavily, her thoughts instantly settling on the image of Faith being brought in.

"How is she?" Dawn asked softly.

Buffy shook her head and willed her tears back. "I only saw her for a second."

"It's not your fault," Dawn stated simply.

"Well then who's is it?" Buffy asked her with a shake of her head.

"His," she replied, her eyes darkening.

"His," Buffy repeated.

Not long after Sunnydale had collapsed the gang settled in Cleveland over the new Hellmouth and put the Council back together with Giles in charge. They had settled into a good life until Angel came with a warning from the Powers. They had told him to warn every force of good he came across to prepare for a battle that would put Sunnydale to shame.

When Buffy and Willow decided to make the potentials into slayers it set an evil free in the world that rivaled the First...only this evil wasn't incorporeal and it had a serious hard on for chaos and death. Just when the slayers had evil on the run and scattered to all ends of the Earth he managed to band them together and form his army of evil. The powers called it the scales tipping even once again. Apparently all those slayers were bad for the balance.

The one thing they hadn't counted on was the power that Willow possessed. They all knew she was powerful, but in creating the new slayers she had tapped into a power that quite simply made her the most powerful force on Earth.

She banished his army to another dimension and they all thought the battle was through until slayers started to disappear. One by one they would be reported missing. Then they disappeared in small groups and that's when they all realized his minions were able to jump dimensions for short periods of time to snatch girls they were able to get their hands on.

The Council sent in groups of slayers and coven members on recon and retrieval missions and they had been fairly successful…little did they know, he was just biding his time until someone close to Buffy and Willow crossed his path.

"Buffy, you okay?" Dawn asked her quietly, snapping her from her thoughts.

The slayer looked up and nodded. "Sorry." She reached out and grasped Dawn's hand and couldn't help but notice the scars on the girl's arm from where she'd been bound as she was tortured. Buffy ran a gentle thumb over Dawn's wrist.

"Buffy, it's okay," the younger girl assured her.

"How can you say that?" she asked as she rubbed her tired eyes.

"Because we know how to kill him," Dawn reminded her with a small smile.

Buffy nodded thoughtfully. "The talisman."

"We can do it." Dawn reached out with her hand and placed it over Buffy's.

"Can we?" Buffy asked.

"It's a small price to pay to destroy him."

Buffy nodded. They both looked up when there was a knock on the door. Willow poked her head in and smiled at Dawn. "Hey, Dawnie." She glanced at the older girl and gave a slight nod of her head signaling she needed to follow. Buff nodded and Willow left them alone again.

"I'm gonna go check on her," she mumbled quietly as she dropped another kiss to the girl's head. "I'll send Xander in to keep you company."

Dawn nodded. "Hug her for me."

Buffy nodded and slipped from the room quietly and made her way back down the hall to the room where Faith was. Willow and Giles waited outside for her.

"Was it him?" the slayer asked as she reached them.

"Yes," Giles replied with a pensive frown.

"What are the doctors saying?" she asked as Willow reached out and grasped her hand gently for support. She felt the other two exchange a look over her head and she knew it would be bad.

"She might not make it," Willow told her gently.

"Even with the slayer healing?" Buffy asked.

"They're doing everything they can," Willow offered quietly. "And the Coven will be on it when they're done."

"I know," Buffy replied.

"Have you decided what to do about the talisman?" Giles asked.

Suddenly Buffy was allowed to slip into the role of leader and it allowed her the chance to forget for a few moments, for which she was grateful. "I didn't think I'd have to make the decision alone."

"We should take as little time as possible," Giles reminded her. "We don't know how many more girls he might apprehend to try to get to you now that Faith is gone."

Buffy nodded as she weighed her options. "Can we give it at least one more night to see if Faith will wake up?"

Giles nodded. "Of course." He hugged them both. "I'll be in the library with my research. Call me should anything change."

Both girls took turns hugging him and watched him leave. They took a seat outside Faith's room. "How's Kennedy?"

Willow shrugged. "Physically she's lucky…she's pretty shaken up after seeing Faith the way she was."

"And you?" Buffy asked.

Willow blinked several times to fight off her tears and she sniffled. "I wonder if I'll ever be able to get it out of my head."

"I'm sorry you had to go, Will," she told the witch.

The redhead nodded. "Buff, it's better that I went. You didn't need to see her like that."

Buffy nodded and sighed heavily. "Can we really do this?"

Willow took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Everything would be completely different. This whole new Council for one girl in all the world."

"One slayer," Buffy mused out loud. She shook her head. "Will it really change anything?"

Willow shrugged a shoulder. "Well we'd be eliminating the most powerful evil the world has ever seen."

"Yeah, but at the expense of all the slayers you created," Buffy argued.

Willow sighed heavily and stood up and paced. "Buffy, I made this. I made this evil. We both did and I can't live with myself because of it. We have to destroy it."

"If we even can," Buffy told her, feeling the guilt wash over her again.

"We just have to destroy the talisman," Willow reminded her.

Buffy scoffed. "Yeah, if we can find him and kill him and destroy the talisman and get the girls out without being killed because their powers are gone."

"Well the best plan then is to kill as many of the bad guys before we take the girls' powers, right?" Willow reasoned.

Buffy shook her head. All it would take to rid the world of his evil would be to destroy the talisman. Once it was done he would be gone, but so would the army of slayers. Was it really worth it? She wasn't sure anymore. "It just doesn't seem fair. One girl against hundreds of vamps and demons for so long and then suddenly there's hundreds of us and we're tipping the scales the wrong way?"

Willow shrugged. "The price we pay for being the good guys. Outnumbered and underpaid."

Buffy smiled and hugged her friend. "I guess there's no time like the present," she mused, pointing to Faith's door.

"If it makes you feel any better, she's probably unconscious by now," Willow told her.

Buffy nodded, her eyes trained on the door. "Think she'll ever forgive me for it being her in there and not me?"

"Buffy, she doesn't see it like that," the redhead told her with a frown.

"We'll see," Buffy mused as she pushed the door open slowly and disappeared from sight.

P

A.N. Well? How do you like it? Think I should continue? I'd really like some opinions on this one. Thanks for reading, please tell me your thoughts!! Thanks!