AN: denotes flash back and Dreams

The regal raven haired woman walked through the chambers of her underground palace, and flung herself on to her throne. She looked down at her clothes and sighed, she still wore the imperial purple as was her right as an Empress and in fact in 1,958 years of her life she had changed little from the woman who married an emperor. In this life she was known as Empress Nero, she chuckled thinking it funny and ironic that in this life she chose to hide her identity behind that long ago dead husbands name. She looks towards the tapestry that holds her family tree and remembers the past. I had been the Emperor Claudius's daughter, And had been forced to marry Nero when my father was still alive, when he died and Nero became Emperor, he banished me to Pandateria and divorced me for my sister and thought to have me killed but I had the last laugh and became a vampire and got to watch Rome fall. History was partly right when they said Nero Committed suicide but what history doesn't know is that I was the reason he did so.

I swept up to the entrance to Nero's Domus Aurea and the guards fled at the sight of me, thinking me a ghost coming back to haunt the palace. I took time walking through the gilded rooms, taking in the splendor of what had been Nero's dream until making my way to the center where Nero would have his room's, he always liked to know he was at the center of things. I stepped into the shadow's to watch him for a moment, taking in the sculpted features, the piercing gray eyes, Lushes lips, and the slim muscular body that could give such pleasure and pain in equal measures, it gave me some pleasure to know that while Nero could grow old and infirm, I would forever remain young and beautiful. I stepped out of the shadow, making a slight noise, Nero spun around, I smiled when I saw the look of fear so plainly on his face.

"Octavia, but you're dead!"

"Yes husband I am dead by your order if not by your hand but the great goddess Juno in her infinite wisdom and mercy saw fit to allow me to come back and avenge my death."

Nero's dark eyes widened in fear, his thoughts so plain on his face. "And now you are here to kill me."

"Oh no Nero, you shall not die by my hands, but by your own. I was granted a look into Rome's future and in the future it lies in ruins, you shall see to that dear Emperor. Rome in the future is nothing more than a relic of the past. Remember Nero, It is better to die by your own hands than the hands of a mob."

I watched as he sank to his chair and wept, then I swept out of the room back to my hiding place.

I did not find pleasure in what I had to do; I regretted the necessity of the act. I had not lost my compassion when I turned into a vampire. I did not want to destroy the human world because of some kind of deep-seated disgust for them. I was chosen to lead this crusade and my people to victory.

Joy jerked awake and sat up on the couch and tried to remember where she was, she saw Rose standing in the window watching the last flicks of the sun as it set. The dream, of course it wasn't just a dream her dreams never were, she was a dream-walker and could walk into others dreams and memories when she slept, she was pretty positive she had walked into this Empress Nero's memories.

"Rose, I dreamed of Empress Nero."

Rose turned from the window and sat down beside her cousin. "Tell me."

"Her real name or the name she had when she was alive was Octavia, she was married to Nero. After she was made a vampire, she came back and talked Nero into killing himself."

Rose nodded. "Okay we'll get Willow and the gang on this, I don't want you to walk into her dreams again."

Joy rolled her eyes. "You know it doesn't work like that Rose. Empress Nero and I seem to have a connection, Walking into her dreams and memories could lead to a weakness and a way to end this sooner rather than later. But I felt this strange emotion, I want to say she felt sorry for him but I think it was more like compassion."

Rose's eyes widened. "Well that's different I didn't think vampires could feel compassion, I didn't think the demon let them."

"That's where you're wrong sweets," Spike said from the doorway. "When you become a vampire, the demon get's the body, not the soul. That's just gone."

Joy watched her uncle pace the room like a caged jungle cat ready to pounce on his prey. "But without a soul how can they feel anything at all?"

"Listen pet," Spike said sitting down. "I was a soulless monster for over a hundred years, did many things you can only imagine and something's I wish you girls didn't imagine but I was able to love Drucilla with all that I was. Vampires can feel hate, anger, jealous, envy. The whole scope of human emotion, it makes them a little more human themselves."

Rose nodded. "All right, the sun set we need to get a team out to patrol, Uncle Spike, take Elizabeth, Aunt Faith and Uncle Conner with you and please be careful. I'm going to get the rest of the team working on what Joy found out."

She let her Uncle and cousin alone and walked into the dining room to inform the others. She asked her father to call Giles and let him know, so the counsel could look into it. She sat down herself and pulled a book towards her and lost herself in research. When Hope jumped in her seat Rose lifted her bleary eyes from her book to look at her cousin. "I found something,"

Willow glanced up from her own research. "Tell us."

Hope cleared her throat. "I don't know how useful it'll be, it just says that Nero, committed suicide and that he was the last of the Julio-Claudian Emperors."

"That jibes with what Joy told me." Rose said tapping her fingers. "Nero committed suicide but it was the vamp version of Octavia that caused it."

Hope nodded. "Well it doesn't say anything like that, but then again this Octavia went to great lengths to hide her identity, but if this Octavia is Octavia from history I did some math and she's 1,958 years old."

"Wow," Xander said impressed, "She's older than the master. The first big bad Buffy faced when she came to Sunnydale. Is there anything else Hope?"

She nodded and continued to read. "It says that in A.D. 53 Nero married Octavia, Claudius's daughter from a previous marriage. In A.D. 62 Nero divorced her and then had her killed or so he thought, so he could marry Poppaea Sabina, Octavia's sister."

Willow massaged her tired eyes. "That goes along with the little I know about the Emperors of Rome, Claudius was Nero's step-father, most historians theorize that Nero had Claudius killed so he could become Emperor. Any thing else Hope?"

"Yeah, one more thing. This passage only caught my eye because it describes the final battle between Rome and Queen Boadicea of Iceni, The author goes on to describe a woman in the early hours of the battle and the description fit's our Empress Nero to the ground plus her battle tactics and such seem to mirror the ones used by Boadicea."

Dawn looked around the group of people, her family and worried her dreams were getting more vivid; somehow she knew the time was coming for the second part of the prophecy concerning her was about to come to pass when she would become the new oracle for the Omega. She would have to tell the others before too much longer that she would be leaving them soon but that could wait. "Maybe we need to call this Queen Boadicea to us and get the skinny on Empress Nero or Octavia."

Before anyone could answer Spike and Conner came bursting in carrying an unconscious Elizabeth, Faith running in behind them, Rose was on her feet, running to her fallen cousin. "What happened?"

"We were ambushed, "Faith said, "Six vamps out of nowhere, they attacked and separated us by the time we got to Elizabeth the vamp had her down."

Dawn was frantic. "Goddess, Willow is she going to be all right? Is my daughter going to be all right!"

Willow nodded. "Yeah, it looks like she'll be fine. Just lost a lot of blood it'll make her weak for a few days, her slayer healing should already be kicking in."

Rose was concerned but couldn't show it. "Okay let's get her comfortable and get back to researching."

Dawn spun on her niece. "How can you think of that now? My daughter almost died, God what has this war done to you? Don't you have any kind of compassion left?"

Conner put a hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Dawn don't, this isn't Rose's fault."

Rose tried to keep her voice calm for what she had to tell Dawn. "My mother always told me that the final decision often the hardest ones would fall to me to make, that was my destiny. Aunt Dawn you know that the Omega charged me with leading the champions into battle, Elizabeth is the Slayer, she did her duty, if Elizabeth had died I would have mourned for her but I still have a job to do. Your daughter is not more important than the mission. Excuse me."

Rose left the room and went upstairs to her bedroom, she stood at the window and stared at the full moon, she didn't turn around when she sensed someone behind her. "She had no right to speak to you that way."

"Yeah she did, Uncle Spike. All I have to do is say the word and good people die or get hurt every time."

"There's always casualties in a war." Spike remarked.

"Casualties," she echoed. "It sounds so casual. These are good people. That I got killed or hurt." As she looked at him she continued, "I've been thinking a lot . . ."

"Okay, first mistake." he drawled

"And I can't fault Aunt Dawn for yelling at me that way," she admitted, searching herself, finding herself wanting. "I've just cut myself off from them, all of them. 'Cause I knew I was going to lose some of them, and I didn't want to . . ."

"You listen to me," Spike said quietly. "I've been alive a lot longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that and alive again. I've seen things you couldn't imagine, and done things I'd prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker; I follow my blood, which does not always rush in the direction of my head. So I've made mistakes. A lot of wrong Bloody calls."

He squatted before her as she sat on the bed. "A hundred plus years, only three things I've ever been sure of, your mom, Faith, and you. Rose I love you, you're my niece. I love what you are, what you do, how you try, I've seen your strength, and your kindness. I've seen the best and worst of you, and I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're one hell of a woman."

Rose was silently crying; he could only smile at her kindly, containing his own emotions. "Rose your mother would be so proud of the woman and the leader you've become. Dawn doesn't understand what is to be a leader; she's never had to lead. I love Dawn as if she were my own child but in her whole life she has had someone to take care of her, first Joyce, then Buffy, and now Conner. So she doesn't understand the hard choices are the ones the leader has to make."

Softly, she said, "I don't . . . I don't want to be the leader anymore."

"I don't want to be this good-looking and athletic," he riposted. "We all have our crosses to bear."

She smiled a little.

"Now you get some rest," he ordered her, rising. "I'll get the gang back to researching."

Spike walked down the stairs and in to the dining room where everyone was gathered now. He faced Dawn and Conner across the table. "I will only say this once Dawn, if you ever speak to Rose that way again, witch or not, Champion or not we will fight. You had no right to say those things to her. Elizabeth knew what her destiny was, what her duty was. You think she's lost her compassion, well she hasn't, when she loses a warrior or one gets hurt, she feels their pain as if it was her own, you know what her powers are."

Faith touched her husbands shoulder and he looked back at her, then over to Xander. "Sweet bit will be fine, just needs some rest."

Xander nodded. "I think we should give serious thought to Dawn's suggestion about summoning Boadicea here to get the what's what on Octavia."

Dawn nodded her head and spoke quietly. "But maybe we should wait for Angel and Cordy, it wouldn't hurt to have them here and besides Cordy was a higher being, so she should have some latent power "

Hope slipped from the dining room into the living room and watched through the window as Rose walked down the driveway. Turned to look at her cousin on the couch, in that instant she knew what Rose was doing, she was making a hard decision. She ran back to the grown ups. "Guys Rose is gone."

Rose walked through the darkened streets, most residents had gotten wise and stayed off the streets after sundown, her mind turned over Spike's words. She looked up and saw a woman moving towards her, the long raven hair and ancient clothing was a dead give away. "Hello Octavia."

Octavia smiled a predator's smile. "So you're smarter than you look. Figured out who I was. I never realized that the champion of the mortals was a little girl."

"Caerimonia Minerva, saepia saepire saepsi. Saepio impedimentum!" Rose finished speaking and an invisible fist slammed into Octavia sending her flying backwards a few feet. "I guess I ain't such a little girl now. HUH?"

Octavia stood up and charged, Rose shouted. "Protégé!" and a shield formed around her. Octavia stopped an inch from the shield and smiled. "So you're a magick user and you hide yourself behind a shield of power. The champion of the mortals is a coward."

"Who's the coward Octavia," Rose said throwing her own barb. "You learned from Boadicea but when the Romans made their final attack you ran like a scared little bitch. In 1,958 years all you did, was hide and then you waited to start this war until the most powerful slayer in history was dead, so again Octavia who's the coward?"

Octavia lost her smile. "I bided my time in exile and in hiding so that I could lead my people to a victory. You hate us because you think we're evil but the truth is you fear us because we are higher on the food chain than you are."

A fist being planted in her face that sent her flying backwards into a car interrupted her words. "You know I always hated vampire's that talk to much." Angel said as Octavia stood to her feet.

Octavia stood for a second taking in the scene than turned and ran, Angel shook his head and turned to smile at Rose who had dropped the shield and ran into his arms.

T.B.C.

AN: I know there is a lot of talking and not much actual fighting. Just stay tuned, they will call to Boadicea and get a surprise and a phone call from the watchers counsel might just turn the tide