Giles sent Anya home after locking everything up and unfortunately had Spike tag along because he couldn't carry the girl. She was flushed with fever, and the Watcher and the vampire found her to be a bit delirious by the time they'd reached the flat and Spike had lowered her onto the couch.
"Dad! Dad, I'm sorry," she sobbed, writhing wildly on the couch. Spike tried to pin her there, but she continued to wriggle. "I didn't mean it when I said you'd been replaced, I didn't mean it when I said you should die . . . !"
Behind the couch, Giles cleared his throat and polished his glasses. Spike glanced at him and they shared an incredulous look.
Shilo seemed to look straight at Spike, though her dark eyes were distant. "Let go of me! Is this purgatory?" she demanded. "Is this Hell?" Tears streamed down her cheeks. "I can only imagine that's where I'd see my dead father. And what perfect torture it is for him not even know me, to not even be the same man!"
"Calm yourself," Spike snarled as she continued to struggle beneath him. "No one's hurting you."
"This place is hurting me!" Shilo cried. "Please let me go home!"
Spike released her wrists, allowing her to curl into the opposite corner of the couch. Her teeth chattered loudly.
"Where's home?" Giles asked gently.
Spike shook his head as he watched the girl curl in on herself, trembling and whimpering. "Don't think she's going to answer you anytime soon, mate."
Giles stepped into his kitchen, filling a glass with water and fetching a bottle of fever reducer from the cupboard. He knelt on the floor in front of the shaking girl, placing the glass down on the coffee table and uncapping the medicine bottle. "Shilo? Is that your name?" he said gently.
Shilo raised her head from the tops of her knees, looking at Giles as if she was seeing a ghost. Giles wordlessly deposited two capsules into his palm, offering it to her with the glass of water. The girl silently swallowed them down, draining the entire glass. Giles went into the kitchen to refill the kettle and put it on the stove. He refilled the glass with orange juice and handed it to Shilo.
"Might be easier to deal with in this state," Spike commented, following Giles back into the kitchen. "She's delirious and thinks you're her father. You won't have a hard time getting her to listen to you."
"What is it that happened to her father that's left her so traumatized?" Giles murmured, more to himself as he brought out three mugs from the dish rack.
"Innit obvious?" Spike asked, staring at him in disbelief. "He died. Think that's traumatic enough for anyone."
"You heard what she said," the Watcher reminded him. "It's more than that. People don't just die. Things happen."
"She's not a puzzle box, Rupert. She reeks of humanity. Whether she's from an alternate universe or not, the first thing she probably wants to do is go home." He tilted his head. "And the second thing she probably wants to do is throw herself off a very tall ledge."
Giles felt a headache coming on. "I think it's best you leave now."
"I don't get any tea?" Spike pouted, incredulous.
The Watcher sighed and realized he'd taken a mug out for him. Thankfully, the kettle went off at that same moment. He prepared the hot beverages, leaving one on the counter for Spike and walking back into the living room with Shilo's. He found the young girl asleep, her young face tense even in her slumber.
"Ta!" Spike called as he let himself out.
Wind from outside blew in as Spike closed the door, rustling the young girl's short hair. She shivered. Giles took the afghan from his leather recliner and draped it around her, giving her a long look before retiring upstairs.
--
Giles observed as Shilo got up from her spot on the couch to sit at the kitchen table, watching him quietly as he prepared breakfast. Her features seemed to crumble when he turned around to hand her her plate of bacon and English style breakfast potatoes. She quietly cried as she ate, refusing to look or even speak to him.
"Shilo . . . " Giles said gently, sitting across from her with his own plate. "I need to know more about you so that I might be able to send you home."
"My name is Shilo Wallace," she said softly. "I live on Sanitarium Island. Both my parents are dead. That makes me a seventeen year old orphan."
The Watcher frowned. "S-Sanitarium Island, you say?"
"What year is it?" Shilo asked suddenly, pursing her lips.
"The year 2000."
"It's the year 2056 back home," Shilo said, sounding shocked. She paled, putting her fork down with a clatter. "How can this be?" she whispered tightly.
"Shilo, how did you get here?" Giles asked, gently placing his hand atop hers.
"I was studying," Shilo replied absentmindedly. "In your--In my father's lab." She blushed at the slip. "My father has a lot of journals. Medical, chemistry, alchemy . . . I was trying to replicate an alchemy experiment that he once did. It was a cliché one. You know, turning lead into gold. I don't know what happened. I guess I got too excited and I poured something too quickly. Everything exploded, and when I awoke, I was in a crypt."
"And that's where Spike found you," Giles said.
She nodded.
"In your time, have they succeeded in turning lead into gold?" he asked.
"It's debatable," Shilo replied. "Everyone gets different results. The experiment hasn't been reliable at all, but neither have the people of my time."
"Why is that?"
"People are dying," she said, her voice soft. "It's a wide spreading disease that's causing organs to fail left and right. It's really hopeless. People have stopped looking for cures at this point. It's taking too long. Instead, they've created . . . Alternatives. Advanced surgery that lets you replace any failing organ you have, that is, if you've got the money. I don't think anyone looks out for anyone anymore. That's why nobody is reliable. They're just using one another as stepping stones."
Giles licked his lips, glancing down at his forgotten breakfast. "Is that really a place you want to go back to?"
"I have to," she said. "I promised my father that I'd help make that place better. It's so corrupt. I really have no idea what I could possibly do, but I can't just leave that place behind without trying. It's why I've been studying."
"I'll try my best," Giles said. "To . . . To send you back."
Her bottom lip trembled and she caught it between her teeth. "Thank you."
"By any chance, do you remember the combination of ingredients you used during your experiment?"
She nodded. "I can write it down for you. I-I just have to think where I might have gone wrong. It could have been even the temperature of something." She frowned, looking lost. "Everything in my father's lab is so old. The elements I used could even have been expired or tarnished." She growled to herself. "Why didn't I think?"
"Don't beat yourself up over this," Giles said. "We'll find some way."
Shilo blinked. "How?"
"The world you've dropped into isn't an ordinary one," Giles said wryly.
"Are there unicorns or something?" she asked, sounding incredulous.
"Or something, it would seem," he said, giving her a small smile. "Spike, for example, is a vampire."
She frowned. "And there are more like him?"
"Unfortunately," Giles replied. "Not only that. Completely different species of demon, hybrids, things that have been unnamed for centuries. And they're all attracted to this one place for its supernatural power."
"What is this place?" Shilo asked.
"It's called a Hellmouth."
"So I really am in Hell?" she squeaked.
"Not quite," Giles chuckled. "But I suppose it is close enough."