Chapter 2

"Somebody once asked,

Could I spare some change for gas

I need to get myself away from this place.

I said yep, what a concept,

I could use a little fuel myself

And we could all use a little

Change…"

Dawn peeked through the doorway of the buffet room again. After a moment, she turned around with a smile-only to ram smack into Willow, who'd been standing right behind her. Dawn grinned at her. "They're done! Neither of them are crying anymore!"

Willow sighed in relief and grinned back. "Good thing, too. I don't know how much longer we'd be able to keep all these hungry Slayers away from their morning munchies…"

Dawn laughed and led the way into the buffet room. "Where'd you send them all, anyway?"

Willow shrugged. "I distracted the ones who're awake with the empty pool outside. Now that we've all got our swim gear they couldn't resist the diving board. But once they get done, there won't be a buffet in a five-mile radius that'll survive."

They reached Buffy and Giles and took the two unoccupied chairs at the table. Dawn gave her big sister a kiss on the cheek before sitting down. She took a moment while Willow babbled cheery "Good mornings" to take a look at Buffy and her Watcher, and smiled a little. You'd never be able to tell they'd just been crying their eyes out, except that Buffy's eyes were just a little red and Giles's shirt was a tiny bit more wrinkled than usual.

Buffy caught her sister's expression. "What?"

Dawn's innocent look fooled no one. "Nothing!" She looked over at Willow, silently begging for an escape. Willow winked. "You want some breakfast, Dawnie?" Dawn beamed at her and the teen jumped up to accompany the redhead witch to the buffet.

Buffy's eyes narrowed as she watched them go. "They know something."

Giles chuckled in agreement. "I'm afraid you're right." He joined her in watching the laughing girls at the breakfast bar for a moment, and then stood to refill his juice.

Willow's prediction about the Slayers had been right. As soon as the handful of girls at the pool were hungry enough, they barged in, Kennedy in the lead. Shortly after that, everyone else filtered in from upstairs. An hour after Buffy and Giles had walked in, the entire group was eating, laughing, and generally acting like they hadn't just averted the end of the world less than half a month ago.

Xander paused in the doorway to the buffet room. He was the last one in…again. Every event, every meeting, every gathering in the last two weeks, he'd been the last one into the room and the first one out. He spoke less and told even fewer jokes. He laughed every once in a while, and he smiled and encouraged and generally acted like the big brother that these girls needed him to be, but his heart wasn't there. It was lying buried with Anya in the crater of Sunnydale.

Xander had changed, and not just from the necessity of having to go around half-blind all the time. He barely noticed his missing eye anymore. He felt the bitter irony every time one of the others looked at his eye patch and winced. The wound they saw was the one he was least concerned about. The one that no one saw; the gaping, open, bleeding wound covering his heart, was the one that was slowly morphing him into someone he didn't recognize.

Willow had approached him more than once and tried to get him to talk, but even her famous Resolve Face hadn't made an impact on him. He just didn't care anymore. It wasn't that he didn't love his friends, and Willow in particular, but Anya wasn't there. To him, his life was now clearly separated by a big, inky red line. On one side, his life with Anya in it. On this side, his hollow existence without her. Everything seemed dimmer to him now, and not just because he was only getting half the light he was supposed to. The light of his life was gone, and because of that his soul was cast in shadow.

The young man snorted at the way his thoughts had begun to wax poetic and headed in the direction of the back of the room, towards the table where the Scooby Gang had settled themselves.

Now that had been an interesting development, Xander reflected. A few days after the collapse of Sunnydale, Dawn had mentioned that the four of them: Buffy, Willow, Giles and Xander, had called themselves the "Scooby Gang," way back in their Sunnydale High days. The name had stuck, and before anyone knew what was happening everyone was calling them that. Now, it was the Slayers' title for their four-person command team. Xander wondered if the creators of Scooby Doo knew just how much of an impact that name had made.

Xander good-naturedly grumbled about the title, just like the other three of the Gang did, but deep down he liked it. He liked the fact that they were the Scooby Gang again. It had always been the four of them against the world, and now it was again. What little he still cared about, that was on the top of his list. That and getting a decent breakfast.

Now the others made a point of leaving room for the four of them to sit together, eat together, and whenever possible, bunk together.

Since there were no set room arrangements from hotel to hotel or even night to night, everyone had shared a room with everyone else by the middle of the second week. Even the couples (Willow and Kennedy and Robin and Faith) didn't share a room every night. It was a good arrangement that bred inside jokes, life stories and a general bonding of them as a group. But even with all the mingling, there were always four chairs available next to each other.

Xander dodged Robin (who was balancing several loaded plates), returned Dawn's good morning hug, and plopped down next to Willow at the Scooby table. "Morning, fellow cartoon characters!"

Giles swallowed his coffee. "Xander. We were just discussing whether to wake you."

Xander stole a piece of Willow's bacon. "Andrew threw me out. I was making fun of the Star Trek episode he was watching."

Willow raised an eyebrow at this. Xander sighed dramatically. "I kept telling him, the Ferengi would never let Kirk just take that reactor. The episode is totally out of character! …You really don't care." Buffy offered him a one-shouldered shrug. Giles took the liberty of answering for all of them. "Not particularly, no."

Xander gave him a mock glare and stood up majestically. "Cretins! I'm gonna go eat so I don't have to be in your artistic-bashing presence!"

His exit would have been much more profound if he hadn't tripped over Rona's backpack three steps later.

By late that afternoon, everyone had disintegrated into couples and small groups to take their leisure. The Scoobies, by unspoken consent, ended up at a small glass-topped table near the side of the pool. Cold drinks and an appetizer platter took up most of the surface, except for where Giles had made room in front of him for a small green spiral-bound notebook.

Except for placing orders and the occasional laugh over the antics of Faith and Robin in the pool, the four of them hadn't spoken a word in over half an hour. Willow looked around at her friends. She knew why: the same thought was plaguing them that had been on her mind all day. They needed to decide what happened next. Things had to change. Especially in regards to a certain brown-haired, dark-eyed Slayer.

The redhead witch sighed. So maybe what was bothering her wasn't the exact same thing that was bothering them…but then, none of them were dating Kennedy. Willow nearly smiled at the thought. It wasn't that she and Kennedy didn't get along. Heck, they got along insanely well. Kennedy was a beautiful, funny, witty, vibrant person. She was stubborn, willful, hotheaded, and generally so charismatic that she was impossible not to get along with. All in all, Willow felt privileged to know her and spend time with her. But that was just it: as much as Willow felt drawn to Kennedy, it was purely on a friendship level. Even the physical part of their relationship couldn't shake the feeling that they were just really good friends…who happened to be sort of dating.

And what made all of this even more confusing was that she had the feeling Kennedy felt the exact same way about her. They were going to have to talk soon. Willow's thoughts migrated back to the sounds echoing from the pool and the smells wafting up from the plate in front of her. She picked up a chicken wing and ate it without paying it much attention. She glanced over at Buffy and they shared a grin. Any moment now…

Giles cleared his throat softly to break the silence. Willow and Buffy's grins turned into light laughter. Giles never could keep quiet for long, and it never failed that he was the first one to bring up the big issues. The ex-watcher leaned forward and opened the notebook in front of him to the first page. His voice was soft. "I've…ah, been giving some thought as to what happens next…"

Xander gasped theatrically. "Our G-man thinking ahead! Now there's a shock!"

Giles glared at him from across the table. "Seven years, Xander. Seven bloody years of me asking you never to call me that, and you just can't restrain yourself?"

The young man grinned right back at him. "Seven years and it still gets your hackles up. And you expect me to resist?"

Giles sighed and continued his earlier thought. "In any case, I've been pondering some scenarios…just ideas, you understand, nothing definite." He handed the notebook to Willow on his left. She glanced down the page, recognizing it as a list of all the surviving Slayers and their basic information: phone numbers, addresses, email accounts…she turned the page and saw the same information on Andrew and Robin. That explained what he'd been doing during all those long bus rides. She handed the notebook to Xander, who gave it to Buffy after only a cursory glance. They all knew what was coming.

Giles took a deep breath as he accepted the notebook from Buffy. "As you can see, I've compiled a list of everyone's information. It'll be helpful to have no matter what happens, of course…" He trailed off, unwilling to complete the thought.

Buffy smiled sadly. "But you want to send them all home." He grinned ruefully at her, and nodded. "It seems to make the most sense…at least until we decide what in the world we're going to do with all of them. I don't know about you lot, but the organization of hundreds, if not thousands of new Slayers across the globe is not something I particularly want to deal with at the moment."

Xander nodded in agreement. "Talk about your scheduling nightmares."

Giles chuckled. "Indeed." He hesitated again, tapping on the open notebook. "It seems to me that it makes the most sense to send everyone back to where they're comfortable. And those of them that don't have parents to go back to have all been offered rooms by the sisters at the Convent."

They all murmured their acceptance of this. They weren't about to abandon even one of these girls to people they didn't trust. The Convent was a good alternative. After a moment, Buffy spoke again. "It's a good idea, Giles." She held each of the others' eyes in turn for a moment. "They can each go back to their hometown and start figuring out who the Slayers in their areas are. They can call us with the information about the new girls, start patrols in their cities, get a network established."

Giles smiled proudly at her. "My thoughts exactly."

Willow pondered a moment. "What about Slayers who show up in places we can't get to? Like Africa or something?"

Giles sighed. "I'm afraid I'm rather at a loss. The Convent is working on a spell to locate Slayers across the globe." Willow nodded. She'd talked with Sister Loman over the phone earlier in the day. Giles leaned back in his chair. "Until they're finished, we can't do much in that area. We'll just have to wait and see. But in the meantime, we'll have a relatively far-reaching network of Slayers that will cover most of the continents. It's a start."

The other three nodded, and Buffy even smiled. "It's a start," she agreed. They looked at each other for a long moment. This time it was Xander who broke down and asked the obvious question. "So…what about us? I mean, those of us who aren't uber-strong chicks?" Willow elbowed him. "Physically, I mean."

Giles looked at them seriously. "That's rather up to you lot, I suppose."

Buffy nodded. "Well we can account for a couple of them, anyway. Robin goes where Faith goes." They all stifled laughter at that. How more mismatched could a couple be? Buffy thought for a moment. "Anyone know what Andrew's plans are?"

Willow and Giles shook their heads, but Xander spoke up. "The kid's got nothing to plan with! He's got nadda: no friends, no family, no money. Without us he's just a bum on the street outside the nearest Star Trek convention."

Willow nodded thoughtfully. "I think we're stuck with him one way or the other. I mean we can't very well expect one of the girls to just take him home. I think we're all he's got." The redhead bit her lip and backtracked hastily. "I mean, if we even stay a we through all of this…"

There. Someone had finally said it. They all traded glances for a long moment, not wanting to talk about it even now that the subject was aired. Willow knew they had all been avoiding the time when they would have to decide if the Scooby Gang was going to stick together. They were family, sure, but where would they live? What would they do? Did it make sense to stay together when so much had to be done in so many places?

For a tension-filled minute, no one said a word. Willow and Xander traded looks and came to a silent agreement. Let them decide. They turned their gazes to Buffy and Giles…only to find them completely oblivious to all but each other.

Watcher and Slayer stared at each other, having a conversation comprised entirely of glances and feelings.

A smile. We've come a long way, huh Giles?

A sigh. We certainly have. All for this.

A nod. To save the world?

A raised eyebrow. To save each other.

Xander coughed and interrupted the moment. As one, Buffy and Giles turned to him. Willow and Xander traded another look and then glanced to their friends again. Xander spoke hesitantly. "So? What're we gonna do?"

Giles turned to Buffy and raised an eyebrow, shifting complete responsibility to her in one smooth movement. "Yes, do tell."

For a long moment, the blonde Slayer gazed at the three of them: these who were her friends, her confidants, her support system…her family. Words spoken long ago echoed in her head. I can't do this without you…And, she realized, she still couldn't. She wouldn't. Her smile, when it came, was blinding in its intensity. She turned to Giles. "Just how much money do you have left?"

He eyed her suspiciously. "Why?"

She smiled happily. "Well we're going to have to find a house with enough bedrooms for all of us…and a training room and enough guestrooms so that when people come report they can spend the night-"

The rest of her sentence was cut off by Willow's happy squeal. Before she knew what was happening she was engulfed in a group hug. Their laughter sounded loud as it echoed across the crowded pool.

Faith levered herself out of the water to get a better look at the tangle of arms and legs that was the Scooby Gang, noble defenders of the world. "What's their problem?"

Author's Note:...I did warn you about the angst. Smashmouth owns the lyrics at the beginning of the chapter. What do you think so far? Review, whether to flame or praise. And thanks to Fairfax for the review. The next chapter will be up within the next few days, with any luck. I'm planning on introducing the new big bad. Cheers!